


Redoubtably Lost

by Tiritiri_Matangi



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Hurt!Jim, M/M, Protective Spock, and no one knows what is going on, but there will be a happy ending, everyone is confused, note: I am not kidding when I say Jim is hurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2189151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiritiri_Matangi/pseuds/Tiritiri_Matangi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the year 2259, the Starship Enterprise is not the glorious flagship promised. The prototype dragon squadron has failed, its Captain hurled deep into a coma. Down in the dragonbay his machine roams unpiloted, its programming mimicking life and consciousness. A new transfer may offer the last hope for James T. Kirk's recovery, but when everything logically possible has already been attempted, it falls to a Vulcan to try the impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After a long break, I'm back to writing. Any comments or reviews would be extremely helpful guys - but mainly, sit back, relax, and enjoy the insanity.

Silver scales, gleaming horns. Jim sat in front of the huge sheet of polished metal, admiring his puffed up peacock reflection.

“Dragon AO1 to storage bay.” The order blared over the speakers, its tone just as bored and listless as its speaker.

“Come on ghoster.” Someone closer prodded at him. His sensors registered the pressure, but something so tiny had little chance of moving his massive metallic bulk unless he decided to humour it. Jim swung away from the reflective metal to look at the speaker, his head of a similar size as the human’s entire body. “Yeah. Get going now, we need to finish repairs.”

“Don’t humanize it. It’s a machine,” the mechanic’s companion huffed irritably.

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have personality.” Jim’s friend tapped his nose, smearing it with the general grime humans carried on their skin. “The A.Is in there are really something.”

“They mimic the pilots. That’s all it is, a backup system so that the dragon’ll go dock itself in storage while the pilot delinks, and it’s not even working right.” The grumpy Andorian gestured to Jim, antennae raised in the signal for distress and sorrow. “Massive fucking metal robot clanking around the cargo bay completely unsupervised. Bad enough that the Scott is descending from on high to look at maintenance; I don’t need a piece of outdated weaponry cooing at itself in the wall I’m trying to install.”

“Outdated! The dragons have-“ But the human maintenance technician stopped scratching at his nose. Jim wandered off.

 For lack of anything better to do, he really did go into his storage bay. It wasn’t much. Thirty square meters wide, twenty high, slightly bigger than the norm. He’d chosen it when the flight had arrived; claimed it for himself with the seniority of his position. The blank metal walls were shielded and thick, efficient but not homely. It didn’t even have a door, a stupid three sided cubicle where he was expected to spend all his time. And the support staff wondered why he wandered out occasionally.

Deprived of the miracle of his own perfection, Jim went to standby. His huge eyes slide shut under rotating alloy eyelids as his internal systems complied with the command, programming flicking a coded switch that sent him to stasis while auxiliary systems continued to monitor the world around him. It was a long time before anything disturbed his rest, long enough for the engineers to stop talking and their voices to fade entirely out of range.

When it came, it was a flashing alert. Technically having Bones come within range of his sensors shouldn’t have merited a priority one alarm, but the doctor came down to the dragon deck so rarely. The Enterprise was moored, docked to Thalerious Central Space Station where his best friend should have been eating and drinking and trying to make leave last as long as possible. Jim was out of his storage unit before his eyelids had finished retracting, trying to find a way to make eager whining noises without a voice box, ignoring the yelp of a maintenance technician and zeroing in on the corridor the gruff voice approached from.

“-don’t know how you’re supposed to help.” Bones grumbled sullenly. “It’s not a problem with the robot. The dragon works _fine_ , we’ve checked that.”

“Doctor McCoy, our engineers aren’t experts.” Pike’s voice, the Captain-tones as he tried to smooth Bones over. Jim’s tail began twitching as the concept of having two favourite humans with him at once became clear, the spiked protrusions on his head flaring happily. “You know we could have missed something; something that caused-“ He stopped. “We’re very lucky that Commander Spock accepted the transfer here.”

They were talking about a new person. There were three steps of footsteps getting more and more audible. Jim swayed forward, magnetically drawn to the conversation in a corridor he couldn’t even fit in, wishing there wasn’t an unusual amount of cargo blocking his way closer.

“Accepting your request was logical.” The voice didn’t match any in his databank. Jim began recording, temporarily designating the sound as a ‘Commander Spock’. “I will assist if I can. It is possible I am uniquely positioned to assist with this matter, as I was involved in the construction of the Active Response Unit’s core programming.”

“Is that what those letters in their names mean?” Bones said.

“That is the weaponry’s designation.” It was difficult to tell if the Spock person was agreeing or not. “The pilots have since added the additional and unnecessary title of ‘Dragon’.”

“You made a gigantic flying metal monster with bat wings for forelimbs and you didn’t think anyone would name them dragons?” Bones was blatantly incredulous. Jim stood as close to the entrance’s door as possible, but the footsteps slowed down even more. He sighed, the closest thing he could do to voicing a protest.

“I understand the resemblance to a creature of Terran myth. However I was not involved with the aesthetics of the units, only their programming.” Spock replied evenly.

“Do those programs really count as AI?” Pike successfully interrupted before Bones could find another protest.

“No.” The new Spock answered. “It what is referred to as soft-Artificial Intelligence. ARUs give the impression of intelligence, but are in fact following a combination of core commands and actions copied from the crewmen that pilot them.”

“Which is why they ghost?” Jim moved back a little so he could stretch out his neck, flopping limply on the ground to get his head as close as possible to the door. His favourite humans were _so close_.

“I do not understand that term.” Spock admitted.

“They ghost.” Pike repeated. “They move about even after the link with the piloting officer is disconnected.”

“The correct method of referring to-“

The door opened, Bones yelped, Pike swore, and Jim went cross-eyed trying to keep the unknown person in view as Commander Spock fell over the waist high metal snout in front of the entrance.

Jim blinked. No one else did, but Bones moved into accompanying profanity with Pike. The being splayed unceremoniously on top of his face was not human-organic, pointed ears, hair length, greenish skin tone and slanted eyebrows all matching the parameters for both Romulan and Vulcan species. The Federation was not welcoming to Romulans, which made it far more likely that the unknown organic was Vulcan, but Jim couldn’t be sure. It was probably wise to keep an eye on him, just in case.

Further examination revealed a male-presenting body type as Commander Spock straightened. Captain Pike’s words began to shift towards apology, but he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I am not harmed. Fascinating.”

“What, you think the dragon’d harm you?” Bones said in his defence. Jim tried to bring an arm forward to cuddle him for it. The limb couldn’t fit into the small corner.

“Is it struck?” Pike asked.

“Unknown.” Commander Spock straightened his shirt. “ARU01 to storage bay.”

The Commander’s identification flashed up in response, a string of letters and numbers bestowing upon him the authority to order Jim about. He sighed again, not that anyone would be able to tell between different classes of sigh, and backed up. Grumbling his way back to his cell and dropping his shoulder blades, he let wingtips trail across the floor and sweep up the collective tools of an entire team of maintenance engineers. The debris followed him into storage, ending up pushed against the back wall as he squirmed around to glare back out.

“Fascinating.”

“I don’t think that’s the right word.” Bones edged backwards. Just a little, but Jim noticed it. “It’s glaring. It ain’t happy.”

“Emotional responses have not been programmed into any ARU model. That behaviour is a mimicry of its pilot-“

“I can see that,” Pike twitched with a confusing jumble of emotions.

“-and provides information for my investigation.” Spock finished as though no interruption had taken place. Pretty impressive considering who he’d been interrupted by. “Chief Medical Officer McCoy, I am given to understand that you have the pilot in your care.”

Bones’ entire posture softened, which was completely unfair. “Jim Kirk. He is –was, I don’t know, the Captain of the dragon flight.”

“I have been given Starfleet’s file on James Tiberius Kirk. I am aware of his role on board the ship.” Spock hesitated, visibly hesitated. Jim had already inferred enough to focus on the discrepancy. “There was a record of… substance abuse.”

“Pain meds.” A step beyond Bones’ normal surliness, his eyes went flinty. Pike positioned himself to slightly block the line of sight between the doctor and Commander Spock, body language suggesting an intervention was imminent. “Listen to me, Jim is an idiot, but that happened when he was a _child_. He _can’t_ be blamed for it, and he kicked that damn habit years ago. You shut your mouth. He did _not_ overdose.”

“All medical avenues of investigation have been accounted for.” Spock commented without reaction, and Jim glared harder. “The incidents occurring before the documented addiction are classified. You would need to be at admiral rank or higher to view them. Please explain your knowledge.”

“You need justification?!” Bones spat, and Pike caught on to his arm, restricting the range of gestures he could make. “I’m his best friend. Of course I know what he did after the shitstorm he had to get through. He swore he was off it, never touched the stuff when he got knocked about, but of course I tried looking in to that, I’ve tried everything! I stopped the brain swelling, I’ve kept his body alive through _months_ of inactivity, I tried pluripotency on his cells, telepathic reconstruction, blood transfusion, neuron regeneration, electrical stimulation like we’re in the fucking _dark ages_ , and there. Is. Nothing. No higher function, no consciousness, just the damn signals from his brain to his heart to keep beating. _You fix him_. You fix him, because Pike told me a fucking computer coder could fix him, and you do it now.”

“I am here to evaluate the programming of Commander Kirk’s Active Response Unit and determine whether it played a part in his condition.” There was something on Commander Spock’s face that might once, conceivably, in an alternate universe, have been compassion. That was the only reason Jim didn’t eat him. As it was his fangs slipped out of the sockets in his mouth, visible and bared. “Kirk is comatose, and despite your care… possibly brain dead. I can make no promises. But I will try. I apologise for my misstep.”

Bones didn’t look like he cared. Standing in the no man’s land between them, Pike discreetly shooed the Vulcan off. The doctor’s tense frame held while the compliant stiff back disappeared through a side corridor. With the hiss of the automated door it drained from him like a plug had been pulled, anger and frustration swirling out form him until his shoulders almost sagged under Pike’s hand. “Shit.”

“You’ll need to work with him eventually.” Captain Pike warned, sparing no punches.

“I… yeah. I’ll be fine. I can be professional, but… Jim didn’t hit any drugs, Chris. You know he didn’t.”

“I know. I get it.” Pike said.

“It’s just… hard, s’all. Not knowing how t’heal him.” The doctor’s voice dropped lower. Jim crept out carefully, listening. “Not knowing whether to mourn him.”

“He’s still alive, Leonard.”

“Technically. Only technically.” Exhaustion dripped out of his tone, replaced by an accented drawl that got steadily heavier. Jim came closer still, flattening himself to the ground. They didn’t like him being too big, but he could be smaller, he could try. “His muscles, his brain cells, his everything… they’re all okay. Healed. But he ain’t waking. There’s nothing in that body. I kept him going when his head was rushed about, I even risked putting that blood in him so he’d heal faster, but he ain’t waking up.”

“I know. You’re the best CMO in the fleet, and you’ve done everything you can. Time to see if something was wrong on the other end, right?” It was a bleak statement that attempted to be comforting. “Spock owes me this favour. I’m the closest thing I’ve ever seen him have to a friend. He’ll do his work right, and we can’t say there isn’t something here. That dragon is ghosting pretty hard.”

“I’ll say.” Bones stared Jim down, detaching from Pike’s grip. “You’re the size of a double decker bus.” Jim wagged his tail, crawling forward on his belly. “Sneaking toward me ain’t going to work, no matter how low you get.”

Pike turned around. “Why is it…”

“Trying to sneak toward us? Got no idea.”

Jim widened his eyes pleadingly, shuffling forward on the great flat floor. It was the first direct thing Bones had said to him in months, and he wanted to cuddle his human, to wrap himself around the fragile flesh and protect him, had wanted that when waiting at the doorway, would want that when Bones left him again. But Bones wasn’t friendly.

His head nudged as the human’s chest, gently, ever so gently.

“Ghosting pretty hard.” Bones echoed, and put his hand over Jim’s snout.

Pike looked on. “So. Saving Kirk.”

“A country doctor, a robotic robot maker, and a deranged machine.” Jim could almost feel the warmth of his hand. Bones sighed, and met Pike’s eyes. “What could go wrong?”

 


	2. Chapter 2

The shuttlecraft hovered with its cargo, impeccably accurate. It didn’t need to be, not with cleared space all the way from the framed portrait of stars in the open entrance to the newly replaced and repaired wall at the other end of the long Dragon bay. The stores of replacement substrate they had on hand were neatly stacked up into rows near the door leading to the rest of the ship’s innards, Jim’s ill-gotten power tools the only clutter remaining as he sat on the now fairly mangled decorations to his storage unit. Along the line of three sided capsules looking out to the massive open air landing strip other eyes were open. Some gazed out without interest, recording the intrusion into their living space only to the extent regulation prompted them too. Others had a more personal stake in the sudden swarm of action, the A.I in Sulu’s dragon tracking the cockpit of the shuttlecraft for the presence of its pilot.

While the crate touched down, the shuttle did not. Detaching itself, it reversed out of the open entrance and made a ripple in the protective membrane as it escaped the Enterprise, swerving off to find the opening for the proper docking bay where it belonged.

“Alright! Let’s crack her open!” Scotty’s boisterous appearance coincided with the abrupt disappearance of all the maintenance staff in the area. “Boyd, get that cutter. V’ren, we’ll need a whole lot more chemicals than the standard stock, you know they always skimp delivering a new beastie, someone find Kleenser!”

The Chief Engineer’s voice echoed, carrying information all the way down the bay. What few luminous blue visual receptors that had been closed slid open. Replacement substrates were normal, unremarkable though unneeded given the inactivity of the flight. A new Active Response Unit, an untested A.I and an unknown pilot were far further up the probability distribution of possible events, odds so low they were outside any confidence interval. A prototype flight didn’t get _new_ pilots. Especially not failed prototypes.  

Jim stuck his head out over the commotion, watching red shirted engineers swarm over the offloaded container. The disturbed wasp’s nest of activity uncovered deceptively small packages, levering them open and generating even more noise over the contents inside. Computer terminals began to flicker with code as segments were torn off from the whole, the nano-robotics inside inactive fine silvery sand. In the centre of the chaotic mess bones were unloaded, great key hunks of metal whose fate was to be dissolved and stripped down for building material, cycled into a million possible places and configurations based on what was needed. Scotty began the linkage of one to another, a bizarre sort of anatomical model of what the inside of a stripped out ARU should have looked like.

A corridor door clicked open. Commander Spock stepped in, his posture proclaiming his rank far more obviously than the stripes on his uniform. Hanging from either of his arms were two transparent capsules of blue glowing molten phosphorous glass-compound. They radiated in the same shade of violent blue as Jim’s eyes, a chemical, synthetic light. “I have retrieved the required energy sources.”

“Thanks laddie. Beastie’ll need its blood.” Scotty grunted.

“I am confident I will be able to supervise the completion of this project. You may return to your regular duties.”

“Nah.” Jim recorded the flicker of confused irritation crossing over the Commander’s face at Scotty’s answer, but he didn’t think anyone else caught it. “’M happy. You said you were one of the blokes that made the brains for these?”

“Correct.” Commander Spock said, more robotic than anything else in the room.

“Then I’ll leave the job of installing that to you then.” Scotty clapped him on the shoulder. The action didn’t jostle the Vulcan at all. “That okay?”

“I am certain I will be able to fulfil that task.”

An ensign trailed after him as he found his own terminal. “Do you need any help?”

“I do not require assistance.” The Commander shot her down. With a quiet beep the machinery connecting him to the ship’s computer rose from the floor panelling for his use. He glanced up at the shadow cast across the floor. “Dragon A01, return to storage.”

Jim glared and stayed where he was; partially because he was already in his storage cell, mostly because Commander Spock was an annoying, horrible person who had shown a slight tendency to upset Bones and was thus evil. The ensign trying to attract his attention recovered herself with only minor disappointment and stared up in a far more friendly way. “Come on,” she shooed him away with her hands “back you go.”

Without a way to grumble about it, his retreat probably looked cooperative and docile. Jim nestled back into his cell, head crest rising in vindictive pleasure as one of his stolen tools cracked underneath his weight.

The crowd of people in the dragon bay was reversely correlated with the growth of the dragon. With each completion of each small task heads drew up, smiles lost their strength, and crew snuck away. Scotty obliviously bounced from the skeleton makers to the nano-programmers as the former finished their work, vanishing and leaving behind bare components set into simple but exact positions. Phosphorous capsules waited at one end, a store of chemicals for the weaponry systems to use for catalysis at the other, raw materials laid out in grids between them. Silvered sand piled up in the spaces on the skeleton grid as robotics check-ups gave way to certainty, scattering the last of the engineering crew in one final, terse clump. Kleenser stayed for mere minutes after that, just long enough to try and fail to dissuade Scotty from orbiting Commander Spock like a needy, clingy satellite. Duty discharged, he gave up without any surprise and trooped out the door without further delay, leaving two lone organics in the echoing dragon bay.

Vulcan focus took little notice of hovering, impatient human attention. The Commander resisted being hurried, proceeding at an efficient pace with a slow, inexorable force that batted aside Scotty’s hyperactive attentions. His thoughts clearly belonged to the holographic screen in front of him, not the twitchy Head of Engineering. Two hours, thirteen minutes and five point eight two seconds after having started his work, Commander Spock finally stepped aside for the sparse milliseconds it took Scotty to nip in and boot up the Artificial Intelligence, waking it from the dormancy of nothingness to show it the explosion of systems it now had under its control. There was no first beat of a heart or first sparking of a connection between different elemental parts. The A.I had its own checks and starts to go through before it began to move anything. Allowed the victory of first activation, his project complete and ordered and now better left to itself, Scotty finally calmed down enough to find an exit.

It was the reverse of death. A dragon started with its bones and built its intricate decentralised network from there, the skeleton gaining sliver streaks as nano robotics slid into place along the frame, spreading upward like dyed water along the roots of a plant, discolouring the raw materials with a new surface peppered with tiny, growing details. Metal blocks ebbed away particle by particle, transformed into plates grown from the opposite end of the body. The steady effort weaved together a hollow hull, pulled innards out of nothing, absorbed phosphorous glass and capsule until newly constructed eye sockets were flooded with blue liquid under metal transparency even as above them, eyelids started to form. Entropy itself pushed backwards, order in the universe stopping its decent into chaos for the most infinitesimal of moments as for the smallest sliver of time order snapped into channels, patterns, covalent networks, infinite complexity in its fractal, living form.

Silent monoliths watched mathematics condense into structure, the cells of a colony observing the birth of their new companion. Inside there was room being made, connections freed for new purpose, an adapted node ready for the addition of a stranger to the word of speech in entangled particles, conversation in code fragments. Space made for the new dragon in their network.

The Commander stayed. The rest of the organics on overriding instinct chose food or rest or play or just not-dragon-bay, but he remained. He could have been a photosynthesiser like Gaila, unlikely to need normal amounts of externally obtained nutrition. Or durable like Dave, who scratched Jim’s nose roughly with his antlers and worked for two weeks before he started to yawn. Or he could be Romulan, and an enemy formless and shapeless and enduring. Two definitions flashed up helpfully.

_Species:_

**Vulcan** _: non-specific, e.g. when referring to the race (n) V’tosh; a specific group of Vulcans (pl. n) whl'q'n; non-specific when referring to an object (language, design) (adj)  Vuhlkansu_

_“A humanoid race, with copper-based blood, slightly green-tinted complexion and notably pointed ears, they are responsible in a large part for the founding of the Federation. Over the centuries, Vulcans have developed a culture dedicated to the complete mastery of logic, learning to suppress their once-violent emotions in nearly every aspect of their existence.”_

_Species:_

**Romulan** _, non-specific, e.g. when referring to the race (n) Rihanh; a specific group of Romulans (pl. n) Rihannsu_

_“The Romulans are a humanoid race from the planet Romulus in the Alpha Quadrant. The Romulans are biological cousins of Vulcans and have not gone through genetic speciation. They have a history of aggression towards Federation members, and the long term goals of their central government are at this time unknown.”_

It still didn’t answer his question.

The commander moved in slow, deliberate dance, every centimetre of movement accounted for, each joule of energy in its correct place. His face showed few of the emotional indicators common to sentient species. He hadn’t responded to, or didn’t understand, the reactions of the crew, following some internal protocol for interaction instead of the cues of those around him.

_The Starfleet file registered to Commander Spock lists species as [[[Mixed Ancestry] Genetically Modified] Vulcan-Human hybrid]._

Initial assumption proven. Pike would no sooner let a spy on his ship than a plague on a planet. Commander Spock was Vulcan. Half, technically, but nowhere in the line of his back and stiffness of his stride had humanity been allowed to linger, pulled from him like a weed.

_A Vulcan is able go to an upper limit of two weeks (planetary time) without sleep, but that limit differs between individuals. The average limit is recorded as ten T’Khasi days  (12.71 Earth standard-twenty four hour cycles). The meditation the species traditionally engages in is more critical to their ongoing wellbeing, and a Vulcan can only survive fifty two hours (planetary time) before their emotional control is compromised without it._

Interesting and peripherally relevant to his line of thought, because the Commander could definitely keep working without rest. But there was nothing around him that dictated he _should,_ nothing to force his rooted attention to the computer terminal. Drawn up from its resting place in the ground, it pinged in notification of the failure of its task and Jim’s head itched. The rhythmic metronome of typed clicks paused in response, than resumed normal service. The terminal pinged its distress again seconds later.

The typing paused. Either the Commander could keep typing or he could stop, but the frequent interruptions were beginning to make it difficult for Jim to focus on the birthing swarm. Constant noise could be ignored, constant silence even more so, but occasional odd sound rang out lonely and conspicuous. Jim wrinkled his lips and moved out to see what the problem was; the movement of his soft shifting scales easing the niggling itch in the back of his head. Nothing on the raised projected screen showed bits from the shiny cloud of dragon construction. Therefore, he didn’t care. Satisfied that the coding on the scientist’s screen didn’t concern the health of his new flightmate, Jim disregarded the Vulcan’s activities. The Commander in turn focused on his work, the single lone consciousness not absorbed in the ongoing watch of the melting of metal birth.

Another faint ping. _Access denied_. So that was what that was; a request from the mainframe of the ship, politely knocking on the entrance to Jim’s head and requesting full access therein. His connection with the ship was disused, atrophied with neglect and incompatible with software that was so constantly updated that his thin line to it was about twelve comprehensive updates behind what it should have been; the latter explained the fog of bad coding fixes clogging up communication.

More action from the Vulcan scientist, and the machine made a high pitched ping to add to all the other ones.

Having the insides of his head sprawled out all over a computer screen for the Vulcan to pick through at leisure sounded just great. Really just his ultimate fantasy of a good time. _Access denied._

Another ping, and this time in direct correlation, another _Access denied_ from his own head, a mental door he didn’t want opened. He shook off the itchy scratch-tickle of badly put together lines of communication, his crest flaring up to push the imaginary weight off him.

“Flekh” Commander Spock muttered.

Jim drew an imaginary line between the stupid stiff backed scientist and the niggling irritation of the incessant communication request by the ship’s mainframe, skipping mental addition to leap straight to an answer, and rolled his eyes. The Vulcan really was the very definition of accuracy through repetition, repeating the same, simple, annoying set of computer instructions again and again and again just on the off chance that maybe, possibly, this time Jim would let him in. _Access denied._ Perhaps a polite message just wasn’t getting through. _Fuck off._ His teeth fell down out of their sockets, bared in added threat that the Vulcan didn’t even bother to see, picking up a personal padd to type at. Jim moved his head to see over the blue shoulder, monitoring for further annoyances.

Commander Spock scrolled to the bottom of a long list, and added a new item. Something about vulgarity within coding systems, which Jim didn’t care about because at least it wasn’t another ringing request in his head, only the Commander immediately swerved back to the computer terminal and began tapping away again. But that was what he did, what he wanted to do, study Jim, dissect him, split him open and play in his phosphorous blue-glass blood. _Access denied_.

The mainframe knocked louder as a tiny furrow creased the skin above the Commander’s right eye. Overflow trickled in with the next request, overstaying its welcome as Jim denied it, crawling in the space where general awareness of the ship let thin little loopholes riddle the doorway into his head. _Access denied._

_Access denied, access denied, access denied._ There was nothing to say he had to give Commander Spock his head. Nothing to push him into living through his own dissection, nothing to justify it, and Jim butted his head against the wall of his cell, hissing silently at the continued itch in his head, the scratch he couldn’t force out.

The mainframe demanded attention, ship’s computer pushing harder against the inside of his mind. Code trickled in around the edges, seeping into his vision, discolouring the bright blue of the scientist’s shirt as he typed. The typed code appeared to slide at the door to his head, no badly stitched together short fix or course dump of brute force but elegant, pretty in its tiny little hooks and shards and sharp edges as they dug into his skull, a sophisticated, efficient gallows to hang himself on. A noose, a lock, a cage and Jim wrenched himself away from the strangling code intruding in his head, pushed it back, closed it down. _Disable it disable it fast-_

_Disabling it!_

The information split apart into streams, thinner, more manageable, and Jim narrowed them further, faster than the code that tried to put them back to rights. His head, his rules, and he didn’t want it there, didn’t want the flood of orders pushing itself through his open connection to the mainframe, his mind wide open and defenceless. His body lurched against his will, not his thought or will of the code but a lack-void of commands and a limp falling before he caught himself too hard, his wing smacking into the floor, kicking his feet as through he could take flight, bound and restrained in the pit decorating the Enterprise’s saucer, tucked away and left to rot with a man intent on pulling him apart. Dewclaws on the apex of his wings dug into the metal floor, pulling him upright again. Plates at the back of his throat ground together as his neck twisted oddly, shrieking, nails on a chalkboard, noise, noise finally _noise_ the rebounded off walls and hit, his own action sounding in his own ears as he roared with the twisted plates in his throat and made for the Vulcan, glorying in the gaping shock, the scramble for safety, the crash as his wing tore the computer terminal from the ground and sent it careening off. Jim beat his wings, lifting his whole bulk off the ground as the organic scurried for its little burrows, not nearly the right size to pursue but good enough to send him away, good enough to make sure his experimenter knew just what the experiment thought of someone using their authority like that, to try to twist into Jim’s mind and rip them apart, unsafe, hurting, _underattackprotect_.

Without direction the coding still streamed into his head, flowed off him as he fought to keep it contained. The mainframe did as the mainframe was told, no shutdown command or order to stop, so continuing, relentless, _pushing pushing pushing_ in pain and darkness and fight _._ He could cut off the door into his head, slam it closed but lose that connection to _other_. No databases, no dictionaries, no listening to Bones as he commed the bridge from sickbay. No contact, no voice, unable to even send a polite request to the server if it _wouldn’t stop attacking him_ , hollow void in his head where the relay was supposed to be, another sense cut off, no taste, no smell, no connection.

But they could survive. Just until someone told the mainframe to stop. Keep the door closed until there wasn’t a shoving flood on the other side, that was good.

The amputation was as much cutting off as it was shoving out. It was all just signals, all just electrons. The silence didn’t matter. Only for a little bit.

And the corridor door hissed shut. He heard the click of boots, the stumbling as Command Spock retreated, a final punctuation in the abrupt shift of power. There was the thinking and the coding and the machine-talk-thought, and then there was reality. Jim floated in the empty air of the dragon bay. His wings caught on the laws of physics and gently persuaded them to make an exception, careless defiance of the Enterprise’s artificial gravity as he forced himself to slow back down, to huff unnecessarily in and out and in and out. The rhythm was soothing.

Something sparked, electrical energy rippling across the sensors embedded in his skin. Jim leapt another five meters further in the air as he whirled, his neck twisting as he scanned for the disturbance. Somewhere there was the cause of the noise, somewhere he couldn’t ask the mainframe about, and spikes all over his body flared to expose more sensors to the world around him.

The nanobot birthing-swarm flickered strangely. Some strange light shone from within, odd blue that was deeper than the bright colour of blood or eye, glow as tiny robotics absorbed a new ingredient given to them. In cells lining the walls dragons stirred, older and larger eyeing up the discrepancy in the creation of the new member of the flight.

The computer terminal. Jim jerked his head down to the sparking hole in the floor panelling, but the beheaded console wasn’t lying anywhere near it. His stomach dropped in unison with the rest of him as he thumped down to the ground. No matter how he craned his neck, searching both sides of the swarm, brushing aside a crate with his wing as through the terminal could have accidentally lodged itself there, the odd blue in the birthing-swarm rang far too familiar. Its colour was a precise match for the missing technology. He’d interfered with the birthing-swarm. Tossed an ingredient into the recipe which should have never been there, an unknown reactant in a sea of catalysts.

_Terminal comprised of:_

_35.67% Iron_

_12.89% Cobalt_

_30.67% Copper_

_20.77% Other_

_Other?_

_List of ‘Other’:_

_67.56% Insulating material_

_32.44% Transparent material_

Other. Iron, copper, cobalt, they were metals. Not the compounds usually used to make a dragon from, so the A.I hive mind busy building itself a body would reject and dispose of them. But Other. Insulating material that had no place in a creature built without the wiring of a computer console, transparent prisms used for a holographic interface dragons didn’t have on them. The floor of the dragon bay was sprayed with off signal, inundated with the stuff so that no baby beast could mistake the ground for building material and make themselves a substandard body, but the computer terminal came from below the floor. It didn’t have labelling, nothing to keep the nanobot swarm from breaking it up and using it to build bones and wings.

If the baby harmed itself, it would be because of Jim. He’d thrown the computer terminal into the swarm; let the poor uneducated A.I have access to something it was never meant to play with. The good dragons, the ones that stayed in their storage bays and let organics in their heads to play around, they’d stayed still. They’d watched, they’d waited like they should have; they were waiting then and would be until their next activation signal. And he hadn’t, he’d screwed shit up, tossed a confusing, unfamiliar variable into the complex mess of equations busy giving itself form.

The nanobots hummed. Around them the monoliths of the dragon bay waited, once more uniformly mute and dumb, observers to the new experiment and its uncertain result.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're on to number three. Please tell me if you spot any typos - I've had a look through but I'm not too good at finding them. This should be an interesting chapter.

The baby blinked, eyes trying out different levels of dilation as it gazed at the humans around it, head and every limb lying limp on the floor in a puddle of untested young A.I.

In most aspects, it was normal. Twenty seven and a half meters long from tail tip to snout, which sounded more impressive than it was. Most of that length was tail or neck. Four limbs that didn’t seem to have undergone any major cosmetic alterations, the forelimbs bat-like with folded up sails collapsed ungracefully over the floor. The crest on top of its head was normal, untainted, graceful panes of thin silvered skin arcing between longer, thinner horns like miniature wings themselves, a frill far more ornate than any other dragon’s. Most pilots eventually shortened the head horns, but the default was displayed perfectly on the unmodified baby. Its eyes were the normal, luminous blue, its teeth sharp and mouth closed awkwardly over uncooperative numb lips. The snout was the oddity. A low ridge of not-normal, a band of deeper blue than the molten phosphorous of its eyes, it shone oddly, actively projecting a twenty centimetre high list of figures, numbers and letters that hovered a hand’s width above the new dragon’s nose.

When Jim bumped his head up to the roof of his cell he could read them. Start up procedures, new recordings of light and sound and the touch of hands upon the baby’s skin. The thoughts of the A.I inside, displayed on a holographic computer interface for all to see. No privacy for the young thing, all the mechanics and passing personnel free to glance at its thoughts whenever they wanted.

It wasn’t fair. A mind that young couldn’t know how to filter between what was private and what should be shared with the rest of the world, didn’t need its own thoughts appearing on the air in front of its nose.

It was also his fault. Jim sighed, giving in to the responsibility of wrongdoing. He nudged Dave aside, giving up the lovely scratching that was Dave’s religiously adhered to morning antler sharpening routine to push his way through the crowd. The organics parted easily for him, as was expected. When faced with a gigantic piece of moving metal most people gave in without fuss. He successfully cleared the area around the baby, keeping the space empty with precautionary sweeps of his tail as he settled down. The baby A.I observed him, going a little cross eyed as it tried to keep the wing tip he placed across its nose in view. His metal wing-skin disrupted the projected interface. With the holographic recording of private thoughts covered up, and absolutely nothing better to do with his time, Jim began showing the baby how to raise the crest on its head.

Patient demonstration was required. After raising and lowering the crest on his own head repetitively for ten minutes, Jim was still only able to coax a brief, uninterested twitch from the baby. He tried again, checking his teeth were ever-so-carefully retracted before he mouthed at the other dragon’s crest, coaxing the metal joinings upright with his lips. They stayed upright for ten seconds or so, briefly showing the display of silver in all its near-animal peculiarity before the frill deflated like a punctured balloon. But there was movement in the spikes that supported the silver stretches of skin; uncoordinated flicking as the baby tested what moved what.

The body underneath his froze.

Jim moved back from his close inspection of frills to look the baby over. While they were mechanical, and so actions such as breathing, blinking, or fidgeting were extraneous and strictly optional, the new A.I was programmed to start learning and exploring as soon as possible. It wasn’t healthy to freeze up and refuse to interact with the world.

Blue eyes stared steadily back at him, lit up by the molten phosphorous that gave them their colour.

Weird. He prodded at the baby, trying for a response.

The dragon shifted. Its head lifted, mouth closed, lips firm, neck fibres drawing its massive muzzle up off the ground with clear and direct purpose. Clearly there’d been a change of driver. The mind inside the unyielding gaze was uncoordinated, a little unsure, dumped into a new environment, but still very clearly in control. With one blink and the narrowing of eyelids to the perfect dilation, the eyes of a child were replaced by that of a matured consciousness. He lifted his wing off the other dragon’s nose, and the floating information confirmed what Jim already knew. Uplink established. The baby dragon’s pilot had joined with the little A.I in their shared metal skin for the first time.

With Jim’s wing off its snout the linked dragon was confronted with what the elder had been hiding. One of its arms attempted to rise off the floor, but the movement wasn’t quite enough. Flopping, scrabbling, the combined effort of raising both forelimb and head overloaded the new joined mind, both head and arm collapsing to the floor under the strain. Together pilot and A.I achieved what the artificial partner had been unable to do alone, successfully going completely cross eyed as they looked at their nose. The running commentary of thoughts across its surface increased to a sprint, something Jim respectfully covered up with his wingsail again. The two newbies disagreed with him, shaking their head spastically until he retracted his arm. On glowing blue air-writing the internal diagnostics they ran flashed up over the screen. He ducked his head in second hand embarrassment.

“Commander? Commander Spock?” The material of Jim’s wing was more tent-like then scaled. Used to everyday interaction with huge machines, the technician simply pushed his way underneath it. “We don’t- Sir, we’ve got no idea what happened. With the, um… the screen on your unit’s nose.”

The blank eyes suddenly looked a lot more familiar. Codes for a video streamed across the nose-screen, raw instead of translated into any sort of image. A faint, quick burst of activity followed, just a flicker as finally, disconcertingly, the hologram turned clear. A single line of letters appeared, slower than a human could type. _I believe I know the source of the issue_.

“Commander?” The poor tech fumbled with his PADD. “You’re the one sending that, right?”

_Yes. Spock, identification code 18973-Omega-17-4_

The Vulcan had different identification and authorisation codes. _Interesting_. That usually meant a recent change from one branch of the service to another, or a rise in rank. The tech, dwarfed by the units on either side of him, confirmed the code matched the one on his PADD and dropped most of the tension he was holding. “The uplink worked?”

_Affirmative._ The Commander’s speaking style translated well to his new position as a robot. Almost creepily well. _A systems check has shown that a damaged computer terminal was accidentally put within range of the nanorobotic swarm while construction was 78.786% complete. The materials and technology of that terminal have been fully integrated._

“Yes, you’ve got some changes.” The tech nodded.

_Please inform Doctor McCoy and Captain Pike that I request their presence in a conference room after this initial uplink session._

“I can do that.” While outwardly obedient, Jim could detect strains of ‘I’m not a Yeoman’ colouring the tech’s tone. “Can you give me a reason to put on the memo?”

_Active Response Unit AO1 displays odd behaviour. Memory banks on this unit confirm it has reacted protectively. This may change or discredit previously discussed hypothesises regarding the ongoing investigation of this flight’s commanding officer._

“Kirk?!”

_That is the being I refer to. Please send the message._

The technician began squeaking something else, but the holographic screen shut off. Jim could see Commander Spock’s focus turning elsewhere. All along the streak of pathetically floppy silver, scales twitched. One clawed hindleg pushed ineffectually at the ground, slipping clumsily over the floor panels. Another wing unfurled, knocking something over just out of Jim’s peripheral vision. Wicked blades on the tip of one wing found the ground and dug in, an attempt to literally claw the gigantic body up onto its feet.

Stupid, inconsiderate. The Commander and his baby partner-mind were going to get someone killed. Claws weren’t for balance or stability, should have been retracted and light and gentle.

Admittedly, he hadn’t set the best example. Jim’s reckless lunges and offended anger had been no one’s finest hour. But that wasn’t the way anyone was supposed to move, he couldn’t have the Vulcan-plus-baby combo hurting anyone in the dragon bay, and Jim was man enough to admit that possibly chasing Commander Spock out of the room hadn’t been the wisest action to take, even if this was all, at heart, the stupid Vulcan’s fault. He reached out, his own forelimb infinitely more stable, and firmly pressed the baby dragon’s neck down to the floor.

The Commander didn’t like that. His thrashing was more like a confused puppy than a fearsome mythological creature, but Jim increased the pressure, just in case. He dropped his head down on level with the baby and pushed out his teeth, opening his mouth wide in demonstration.

That got him attention. Baby and pilot went still; eyes very focused on the set of large blades close to its face. Apparently Vulcans did fear responses after all. Wise of them, but he wasn’t trying to threaten. Retreating a little, Jim ignored the random tug on his tail and gaped wider, a dentist’s smile of slightly uncomfortable display. Slowly he retracted his teeth. Once his mouth was just gums and closed sheaths, he nipped at his own wing. The Vulcan and his dragon watched the show, their shared eyes wide. Emphasising the lesson, Jim took their snout into his toothless mouth, grasping it carefully before he let go. Then he pushed his teeth out again, slow demonstration of something usually instantaneous. Prodding the baby with the curve of one foreclaw, Jim wasn’t sure how obvious he could make the message.

 Whether by A.I or Vulcan, the baby opened its mouth. Its own teeth were half extended, wavering between deadly and safe. The bottom row withdrew and in befuddled connection the top spikes fell further, one half of the mouth gummy as the other rivalled a shark.

_No._ Jim shook his head. _Ignore gravity; we don’t have reflexes that rely on it._ There was no way to translate the second sentence into body language.

The first part got through just fine. Spock poked at his top teeth with his tongue, apparently trying to push them back up. It wouldn’t work unless he relaxed, but that was something he needed to figure out for himself. First-link was a disaster of input-mixing, of touch through not-skin and a void where some senses had been as others rose to fill that lack with rivers of information, time sense magnified beyond organic capacity, smell vanished with taste, balance that accommodated not only the pull of planet or star but those far beyond that, a network of pulls that dipped towards the crowded heart of the galaxy. As it was all available and taken away at once. Confusing, overwhelming complexity in a new body.

Something tugged at Jim’s tail. It was becoming a little bit of an unwanted theme. He shook his appendage loose from whoever had grabbed it, sweeping it in a wide arc that got rid of the crewmembers sneaking closer to the Commander. No one organically breakable was permitted to come close to a beast adult in tooth and claw but baby in mind. It was unsafe. They’d hurt themselves, smack themselves against hard, unyielding metal, get ripped on shards and crack open the skins they wore, the flesh so delicate it burst open whenever it could to spill the liquid organics needed but couldn’t replenish, the blood that they were so vulnerable to losing. _No organics near the baby_. It was not baby’s fault, but the claws on its forelimbs had already dug into the floor, already ripped open metal far stronger than any crewmember. _No organics near the baby._ Not until it was safe.

No one else saw the absolute necessity of this approach. Three hours later when Commander Spock’s controlled intelligence faded and left the wide eyed A.I in charge, the crew of the dragon bay were still arguing the point with him. Jim had been shouted at, tugged, ordered, and Scotty’s lunch was somewhere tangled on his head crest, but his tail still swung its arc in the space around him, keeping anyone meaty from crossing its perimeter. Even Dave had sworn at him, his lovely antler sharpening friend complaining about the ghosting dragon.

Baby made progress but without Vulcan intensity to keep it on task it acted much more like a toddler. Endlessly repeating the same tired old action wasn’t what Jim considered a good time either, but it was _necessary, necessary, necessary._ He gave baby its own tail to stick in its mouth and chew, keeping it occupied as he coaxed and pushed and bullied it into retracting-extending, retracting-extending. The unpleasant sensation of biting one’s own tail when the young unit got it wrong helped a little, and the slow improvement continued.

Repeat, repeat, repeat again. Correct and show how it was done, then repeat more. Without the need to use the majority of his processing power Jim slipped into a near daze, the same exact set of motions continuing on in a timeless productive boredom.

A priority one alert roused him. Internal systems reported the arrival of alpha shift, nearly a full ship’s day of pulling his teeth up and down. His tail swept the ground behind him, although nothing had come within range to be pushed at for three point four hours. Bones. That alert was for Bones. The baby was doing better now that it held its own tail as an incentive not to fail, but Bones was his human, Bones was precious. Nothing should ever hurt Bones, not enemies or toddlers or the ground itself.

He tracked the one special set of footsteps among many, the loping, grouchy gait. With his hearing tuned up, Jim could catch conversation as his human came within range. “-attacked you, why’re we going down to play with it?” The doctor sounded particularly irate.

“As I have explained, it is possible I inadvertently provoked a negative response.” Spock. Of course. Spock got to have all the fun, got to talk to Bones whenever he liked, probably spent his entire life curled up on Jim’s human’s lap.

“Well,” Pike coughed, very carefully unopinionated, “that’s new.”

Bones was less diplomatic. “What does this have to do with Jim? Should we be starting containment…” his voice cut out. When he started to talk again his tone was too strong, enforced distance from the topic at hand. Formal and quiet, the Chief Medical Officer asked, “Did it do something to Captain Kirk?”

“That scenario is highly unlikely.” Commander Spock spoke back with all the reliability of a computer database and similar levels of compassion. “I have a question, Captain Pike.”

“Yes.” Pike acknowledged, more grave than he’d been just seconds past.

“Captain Kirk and yourself both occupy the same rank, despite serving on the same ship.”

“The Enterprise is the only ship with a dragon flight.” The Captain said. “I’ll explain later. Some other time. Not now. Why do you need me and McCoy here?”

The Vulcan Commander replied promptly, obediently pushed away from his own question. “Immediately upon established the piloting link with my unit, ARU01 demonstrated unusual behaviour, pinning my unit to the floor and paying close attention to the unit’s teeth. Security footage from the last eighteen point six three hours indicates the unusual behaviour has continued after the piloting link was disengaged. As the person who was the recipient of the behaviour, I am of the opinion that it was an attempt at training both myself and the installed programming of the new Active Response Unit.”

“Which is great,” Bones huffed, “but why do you need us?”

“The Captain was to be automatically alerted to any discoveries made,” The Commander answered, “and I require you, Doctor McCoy, to observe the behaviour in person and report on it. You have first-hand experience of interacting with James Kirk while he was uplinked to his Active Response Unit.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can make no conclusions at this stage-“

“No, Commander, was. Does. That. Mean.” Bones stopped walking. “You implying that Jim might just be in a long uplink? You’re telling me you don’t think that’s the _first_ thing we tried?”

“I am not casting aspersions on the competency of the Enterprise’s medical division, nor am I implying anything at all.” The Commander stopped too, followed quickly by Pike. “I simply have an unknown variable, and as a result of my involvement in the interaction, have been biased beyond being able to carry out an independent assessment. You indicated that should there be any opportunity you would be glad to assist me. That is what I am requesting now. It is voluntary.”

“You don’t have to.” Pike agreed. “No one is expecting you to set up camp down there. Len, as a friend, let me make this clear,” a rustle of clothing, some form of touch, “you don’t have to _._ ”

“I… yeah.” Jim could almost hear him breathing. “I know.” Long silence. “I’m here anyway. Let’s go.”

“Please take the opportunity to witness the behaviour before making judgements.” The Commander asked them, and the group started moving again.

The door separating the three organics from the dragon bay opened. Jim sighed, retracting his fangs for the foreseeable future and swivelling his neck around, unable to resist the allure of a visit. He should have been over there, waiting for them to come in, begging a pat or a scratch or maybe possibly a hug, but the baby. None of his favourite people (or the Vulcan) could come near the baby.

Being the annoying little brat it was as soon as his eyes skipped off it the infantile AI took its chance at freedom. It flailed, one of its wings snapping out as it recognised its pilot in the room. Jim stepped on its head as he scrambled to push the wing back into a neat, safe, contained bundle, uncaring of the rapid indignation he could see flickering down baby’s holographic snout. Forced acceptance that its limbs weren’t going anywhere appeared on the screen, but the A.I now had a fair idea of what did what with its head and neck. It raised itself up a meter above the ground, grinning toothily at its pilot.

Teeth out missed the entire point of what they’d just been doing. Jim smacked the other dragon on the back of its head, hard, and when it turned to complain at him, dropped his fangs down and up. A reminder that teeth retracted was the default position, especially around people who could bleed. Obediently, baby put its teeth back. Jim glanced over at the humans in the room, quickly making sure they were still well out of range. Commander Spock stood at perfect parade rest, Pike judged from his usual confident stance, but Bones wasn’t anywhere near as upright as the other two. He’d wilted somehow in the steps between entering and where he stood. And as he wilted he’d garnered tension, collecting it dripping down his back and in the flicker of his eyes, the nervous pattern tapped out against a thigh. Bones had been there before, should’ve known it was safe. Used to barge in like he owned the place, punch Jim’s head off from an affectionate nuzzle, swear at him and refuse to go near the open exit and its force field keeping air in. Be there when his flight landed, greet Jim and smack him around until Jim delinked. Just as immersed in the dragonbay as Jim was, herding pilots until he was sure they were fine, hypoing Jim after three shifts in a row, nagging, complaining, grouchy companionship.

Bones. Bones was here, Bones coming closer, Bones to fix him up and swear at him and make it all better. Always there, always behind him to clean up Jim’s fuck ups, hadn’t been able to hide behind him in _so long_. He wanted to. Wanted to hide behind the concentrated dose of southern ire and kinship, wanted to let Bones lock him away while Jim sorted himself out, have the doctor protect his retreat and bar him in and take care of him all at once. Wanted to just listen, whether Joanna had gotten a good school report, if anyone had injured themselves too stupidly. And he was _here_ , the doctor finally out of his medical bay, voluntarily reaching toward him, falling into the perimeter of empty space around Jim in the pause between one footfall and the next.

Commander Spock indicated Jim’s current position. “ARU01 has been demonstrating the action of retracting and extending the teeth of the unit. In your opinion, would this constitute a teaching or nurturing pattern of behaviour?”

“Jim ain’t the mothering type.” Bones said, his voice dead level.

Pike shot him a concerned look. “We barely got him to record the introductory advice for dragon pilots. Admittedly by that point it didn’t look like we’d see any more pilots; but it wasn’t just that. Kirk trusts his crew to do their job and not get killed.” Jim noted the strange cocktail of present and past tenses in Pike’s sentence.

The Commander’s eyebrow ticked up. “So this is not behaviour Kirk exhibited at any length or in quantities strong enough to carry over into the mimicking protocols?”

“No.” Jim tilted his head, echoing the open concern on Pike’s face as they both stared at Bones. He never spoke so flatly without intonation or depth. “Can I go?”

“It would be of assistance to me if you stayed,” the Vulcan began, but Jim was no longer listening.

Bones looked so sad. Almost lost, but that was impossible, because the dragon bay was large and empty except for the baby shoved in the corner, a clear line of sight to every exit. His human couldn’t have forgotten how to get in or out. Slowly, with a warning push at the baby in case it tried anything, Jim got off the young dragon. He padded forward as Command Spock finished his explanation of Bones’ helpfulness.

Pike was already shaking his head. “No. Doctor McCoy, you’re excused. Get back up to sickbay.”

There wasn’t any argument. Bones must have been broken. As he turned away Jim reached out, his neck long enough to stretch and let his metal tongue roll gently across his human’s ribcage, the blue shirt of medical and sciences rumpled under his touch. Whatever information he’d misplaced, any reason he had for looking so lost, it would all be okay. It would be fine. His tongue caught at Bones’ movements, halted his steps for the door. “Get it off.”

“This is fascinating behaviour.” Command Spock noted.

“I said get it off,” Bones shook, muscles trembling, “or I will find the nearest power tool.”

“Its fine.” Pike, steady as a rock, unshakable and placating as he approached and tugged at Jim’s tongue. “It won’t hurt you. It’s a machine.”

“I know it won’t hurt me. Just like it didn’t hurt Spock. Just like we’re sure it didn’t hurt Jim.”

“It did not cause permanent damage.” The Vulcan stepped up, his hands pushing at Jim’s tongue confusingly; like he didn’t even want Jim to comfort Bones. “Do not harm the ARU.”

“Oh no, we wouldn’t want _that_. God forbid a robot get hurt. It isn’t _alive_ , you idiot, it doesn’t _feel_ anything.” He shuddered, his arm wrenched away from contact with Jim’s tongue. “It’s a broken, useless, empty machine, and I don’t want it near me. You said yourself its unstable, it’s attacked something organic once already. This _thing_ is the reason Jim’s lying in a vat of gel without his own consciousness, it actually attacked you. Make it let go!”

“ARU01 to storage, effective immediately.” Commander Spock muttered, pulling at Jim’s tongue again.

Bones was saying those things, but surely not about _Jim._ He loved Jim. He just meant those other dragons, he wasn’t talking about Jim, Jim could still hold him, he had to. Bones’ voice was sharp but he was watering wet rage, and Jim was sure he could fix it, sure he could. “Fuck-“

Pike caught hold of the doctor, physically pushed him until Bones had his back to the dragon, sunk his fingers into the flesh around Bones’ shoulders and held him there.  “We’ll get it off you. You need to stay still. Stay. Still.” He glanced at the Commander, eyes wide and questioning.

“Order the ARU away.” The scientist snapped.

“Go away.” Pike said, words an unfamiliar, uncertain taste in his mouth. “Get off- release Doctor McCoy and return to… your quarters.”

He didn’t want to go back to his cell. Jim backed his head away, his tongue extending, half-obedience, almost following, not-quite-doing, somewhere in the vague area of _I did something so you can’t get mad._ Pike glanced at Bones, at the tension Jim was fixing with the metal loop of tongue around his waist, at the expression the dragon wasn’t in a position to see. “If you do not, you will be disobeying a direct order from a superior officer.”

Jim didn’t want to do that. Not to Pike. But it was important.

“You are _ordered_ to cease and desist.”

He let go. Bones jerked away. Commander Spock stepped into his path, blocking Jim from his human for the sparse second it took Bones to leave him, flee into too-small corridors with the hiss of pressurised door. Bones’ breathing was disproportionately heightened, heartrate up 12.9%, and Jim could still see those things, hear them, sense their non-negotiable presence in his world but he was barred from affecting them. His human there, just out of his reach, not wanting to be reached. Hated Jim’s touch, pleaded to get Jim’s tongue away from his skin.

_Why_.

_I don’t know._

_What did we do?_

“That was a bad idea.” Pike, stating the obvious.

Jim went to his cell. He was a good dragon. Obedient. Bones didn’t come back, but why would he. He didn’t want anything to do with Jim, the broken, useless, empty machine. Of course not. Those words had been for Ji, needle sharp and prickling, and he didn’t want them but they followed him, inescapable.

Commander Spock was back to parade rest, perfect, unruffled and unaffected. “Explain.”

Pike retreated to mere steps from the door, beside the huge sheet metal that made up the farthest end of the dragon bay. It took the Captain a while to find the words to speak. “He used to come down here a lot.” Pike stared at the wall. “All of the pilots did. Everyone followed Jim. This place was never quiet. Now it brings back memories. Out of all the people on this ship, Spock, you choose the most biased.”

“His bias was what could have been beneficial.” The Commander said. “He is familiar with the behavioural quirks of Captain Kirk.”

Pike crossed his heels, weight propped up against the wall. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring him down here.”

“No. you are correct.”

Pike lapsed into silence. Without any human conversations or movement the dragonbay had no pulse, no noise. Just the thrum of the Enterprise’s engines, the faint clink of a dragon rearranging itself. Industrious and blank, machinery abandoned to turn itself over on endless cycles of repetition. “We must seem very uncooperative.”

“I do not necessarily understand the emotional impetus behind your actions,” each word was measured, precise, “but I recognise their validity.”

“You gave up a lot to come help me.” Pike shook his head. It smacked into the wall he leant on, ignored and quickly forgotten. “I’m aware of that, Spock, don’t think I’m not. You had to call on your clan’s influence.”

“Starfleet would not listen to reason.”

“You still didn’t like it.”

“Vulcans do not ‘like’ anything.” Spock replied as if by rote.

“They don’t like that in particular.” Pike raised his eyebrows.

Spock raised his higher.

It was difficult to decide whether it was a stand-off or not, both participants without aggression but somehow immutably on different sides of the impasse. Pike straightened back up and the stalemate was lost, Spock’s gaze dropping deferentially to the floor. “They’re mourning him.”

“Clarify.”

“Kirk isn’t dead, but they’re mourning him.” He waved at the huge docking bay, its cells and silver machines and permanently open, glowing eyes. “This is his grave.”

 Pike turned his back, the corridors of the Enterprise swallowing her Captain away from echoed caverns and back to his bright, loud bridge on the apex of the ship. Because who would want to stay with the dragons, walk amongst their ever-following eyes, touch metal bodies which would wick away the heat of their contact in a cycle of endless stealing. The Vulcan remained, a lone figure of immaculate posture in the oversized room. He didn’t count. His job tied him to the empty room, anchored him beside the torn hole where a computer terminal once rose from the ground.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago. It had been different. When he shut his eyes the memory played, music as vivid as stagnant mud heard through a shifting press of bodies, voices, and tastes. A garland hung on Sulu’s dragon, a menorah lit and gleaming on Cupcake’s beast, fake snow turning Chekov’s lizard into an oversized slide. Buzzing faces all around him, infectious joy, stupid laughter over something no one would find funny except at a party with a drink in hand. The sharp tang of Scotty’s brew spiking through his drink, the rhythmic pulse as the crowd fell down the gradient from swaying to dance, high laughter as Hin’tal finally made their pass at Bell and cooing as he said yes. Warm light, happy sounds, dragging Bones behind him as he searched for a free spot to put their plates. Someone calling him, turning him around to shove him at a blinking light, _Jim, Jim I got it working lo-_

“-look at it’s little fins!”

That was how it had gone, but the sound was off, out of joint with the rest of the memory, real. He opened his eyes, scanned. His own face, peering back at him from the newly installed wall, lit up from the inside of the circuitry underneath simple shininess. The Vulcan stood unchanged in front of the enlarged screen, assessing, watching the video dispassionately. Jim watched too.

“Knew you could do it, gorgeous.” The camera angle changed, hoverbot flipped over by his curious hands. Gaila smiled upside down, proud and accomplished. “What replacement did you use for the focusing lens, the dibellian?”

“Said I’d make it out of recycled shit, didn’t I?” She stole Bones’ drink. Out of shot, he swore at her.

The hoverbot escaped recorded-Jim’s grasp, floating up to track Gaila’s movements automatically, quickly forgotten about. “Your bot’s is cool, but mine is cooler.”

“Yes.” Gaila rolled her eyes. He remember the friendly sniping, the slightly irritated glare as his accomplishments trod all over hers, even unintentionally. “My recycled vid poster is totally a challenge for your multimillion dollar nanorobotic quantum-propelled monster. You must feel so threatened.”

“Our robots should have a playdate together.” An unspoken apology; the only sort he was capable of.

She dipped her head. Understood, and like him Gaila was quick to forgive. “What’s your costume then?”

“It’s not going to win.” His recorded self grinned shamelessly. “Chekov’s is too good. I suspect outside help.”

“Well show me anyway.” She held out her hand expectantly.

Recorded-self kissed it, but gave the appendage to Bones. Setting them up to sleep together, they’d been easy targets, happily herded under mistletoe, a little too oblivious to be truly ignorant of his plotting. Leading the way through the crowd, hands brushing along his shoulders in greeting, punch-drunk and silly on arbitrary non-denominational winter holiday cheer. “Ta-da.”

“That qualifies as animal abuse.” Bones complained, for the fifth time that night.

Gaila smiled in support. “I think it’s a pretty good idea. Not like a dragon’s alive.”

The camera on the little hoverbot followed her gaze, panning over the piles of wrapped presents crowding around the feet of the dragon in its cell, settling on the head with its cottenball glued on beard and comically tiny hat. “Well, no one’s stealing from this secret santa.” He’d been pleased with himself, no matter what Bones said.

“We could if we wanted to.” Gaila argued. “I mean, it’s cute and all, but dressing up your dragons is like dressing up a statue.”

“Go ahead then.” Cocky smile, crossed arms, fourth drink of the night.

She skipped forward, as uncaring in the recording as she’d been that night, innate grace somehow captured on film. The dragon moved with her, wing stretching to covered the mounds of presents at its feet, head shaking no. “Awesome!”

“I know.” He’d been just as cheerfully entertained, just as dazedly happy. It wasn’t on camera, but he had been, the emotions a new taste on his tongue, new spill over in a room overflowing with life.

“Still not good enough to win.” Bones grumbled.

“Hey, I could-“ his voice was quickly lost as Gaila moved on, her robot attuned to her, video dancing to other conversations, other greetings.

_Hey, I could easily train this thing up_. He dipped back into memory. _Have it do a dance, wrestle with Chekov’s maybe._ Hand waving, stupid ideas, said for spectacle, for Bones’ choked off laugh.

Thing.

Train the thing up, have it imitate life. Make it move like it had in the video, nodding head, protective wing, obedient stretch of muscles under direct. Copy-and-paste instruction, the imitation of life and agency, a body moving to the directionof its puppeteer.

_What would happen if the puppeteer vanished?_

_Unknown._

_Would the puppet continue on, waltzing its way to the tune of a fake, counterfeit song?_

_Maybe._

The face that had been on screen was golden. Bright, expressive, aware of how it drew people to it like moths to a flame and utterly disregarding that power. Shocked blue eyes still unused to their own vivid colour, a smile quick and carelessly dropped. He stared at the wall of his cell, its surface scared and pitted with abrasions from his scales but hard, reflective enough for the mirroring of light, **_law of reflection:_** _the principle that when a ray of light, radar pulse, or the like, is reflected from a smooth surface the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, and the incident ray, the reflected ray, and the normal to the surface at the point of incidence all lie in the same plane._

_I look like this._ Scales sleeked down along his snout, teeth, short head crest, hard lines, angular efficiency. _The eyes match_. Nothing else did. But luminous blue matched the human iris, caught some of its sharpness.

_I am not yours. Not lost in you._

_Not James T. Kirk._

_Can’t be two._

_They couldn’t be. Agreed, then._

_Not ARU01. Mimic. Fake._

A personnel file. Dave from the morning shift, his friend, the one who scratched at him with friendly horns. His specified photo was bleached in the unflattering light of Starfleet’s regulation settings, antlers too big to fit on the screen, their myriad points dictating the personal identity of the Guntarli who carried them.

_“Guntarli acknowledge death by sharpening antlers against a grave marker or object of religious significance. (Starfleet database #67-delta-489 IUNO 1-001-10-12-001)”_ Information, clear cut and quiet.

_Mimic. Fake. Gravestone of Captain Kirk._

_I am his ghost._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, and you all thought this was abandoned. I've got up to chapter 10 written, actually. Because leaving a project incomplete once I've started putting it out there irritates me. And, I imagine, many of you. So sorry for the ridiculously long break, but redoubtably lost is still going.

 

At least the irritating little can-opener was paying attention.

That was literally the only positive thing that could be said for Commander Spock and his partner A.I’s attempts at flight. Once again the ghost, pilotless dragon was forced to duck, giving up on any illusion of dignity and tucking head, neck and torso into a nice neat ball that presented a smaller target. Behind him the flailing continued. The Commander had shown some sense, ordering all the technicians out of the dragon bay before he tried out his wings, but there were so many things so obviously wrong with the ungainly flailing of his forearms that the not-Jim dragon couldn’t even see anywhere to begin the list of faults. It would have been faster to list the things the Vulcan did correctly. He had at least mastered the art of spreading his wings, and was very definitely getting quite practised at waving them up and down. There. List over.

One didn’t just try to _paddle_ their way into the air. The air didn’t care what any dragon wanted and didn’t respond to force. It was no use just flapping away, trying to claw at air like a deranged swimmer. Dragons had tails as a default feature for a reason, and should use them, but first and foremost – it wasn’t actually possible for their wings to lift them into the air. Wider than the width of the dragon bay, they were still completely inadequate at lifting several tons of metal. The laws of physics had to be persuaded into making an exception, looking the other way for a very select group of pilots Spock didn’t seem likely to join any time soon. Weight was supposed to hang far past the point of overbalancing, casually raising itself up in a sort of obscene gesture against reality’s constraints. Expanding quantum flux pinning to non-superconductors for propulsion was the biggest thing to come out of the dragon program. He’d thought that one of the coders for that program would’ve known about it.

 _Not our concern_.

Not even a little bit. He turned his head into the crackly pile of warped tools piled in the corner of his cell and ignored the outside racket, shutting off his vision and squashing hearing down to the bare minimum of what his programming would allow. Not their task, not their student, not in even the smallest amount. Sulu was there to help Spock and his insipid robotic partner, communicating with the Vulcan from his own dragon in the pilots’ small, self-contained communications network. The most experienced pilot there to instruct the new guy in what had to be the most action the dragon bay had seen in months. He covered his face with his tail, managing to at least keep his internal pronouns consistent for one sentence.

Sleep was a half-remembered ideal of complete unconsciousness. Machines did not slip into warm comfort and befuddled minds, and there was no softness in his world, not blankets or warm insulation against harsh edges. But he could dream. Confused, addled things, memories near formless, hauled up from the depths like treasure sunk partway through a planet’s crust. Caught through careful sifting, or pricked and brought back to him by the incessant, constant film marathon Spock seemed to be running of every documented moment in James Tiberius Kirk’s life in reverse chronological order; minuscule snippets of Kirk in the background of someone’s personal cam post, foreign news stories with solemn speeches and painted faces, a million failed attempts of the disastrous  Introduction To Being An Active Response Unit PilotTM, Kirk toppling over in laughter as he failed to maintain a straight face for the camera, _or a straight anything else Bones, let’s be honest_. Dreaming of a dead man’s thoughts was far more preferable to anything outside his eyelids. The dragon ignored all remaining sensory input, retreating to night on Demenia VI, the pounding silk drums of the night markets and adrenaline buzzing through alcoholic happiness. The grin on Le’ti’s face as xe showed the alien human around to xer favourite spots, strongly overlaid by the scent-sight memory of xer face with decadent pleasure drugging up xer gills and flaring xer delicate webbing. Better to feel the ache of feet used all day than nothing at all, to smell the sweaty closeness of the crowd, the bright flash of market stalls that had distracted slow eyes out of wack with the local time system.

There were blurs of rushed lights and dripped grease, food advisements shouted by stall owners, crowded pathways swaying the beat of an invisible current as people twisted and turned and fought against the movement of other people, other twists and turns until all was chaos and high laughter, screams of a toddler’s displeasure, hands on human skin as Le’ti turned the dragon pilot and led him further into the swirl, an anchor in the river of a hundred thousand beings on their own path.

_This unit is being poked._

_Who?_

_Commander Spock individual._

_Ignore it._

_…_

_Poking continues._

_Don’t care. Shouldn’t even be talking to ourself._

_Query: Change set pronoun?_

_Don’t care._ He stressed. _Make it go away._

Memory was more attractive. The flush on Le’ti’s fingers as arousal was coaxed through smirks and false-innocent touches and joking competition, heat coming off the human’s face as xe gave as good as xe got. The shimmering thrill of short adventure as the chase heightened in mutual knowledge of what was to come, one night together in consent and pleasure before both of them had other duties, the light-hearted fun of unnecessary, entraining foreplay, winding each other up tighter and tighter to see who would explode. In the deep dream-like quality of Thungalya music and the central throbbing press of people they could have pulled each other down and sated want right there, but it was more fun to tease and coax and grin, more fun to turn someone else inside out while being turned himself until the line broke and kisses went desperate, talk went to soft gasps, Le’ti intertwining their hands.

Footsteps tripped in beat, staggered as their owners stopped for one more kiss to hold them the distance until privacy, fuel for the short time distanced from each other as they got lost in the streets. They escaped the market through the wrong exit, giggled and cursed in equal parts as the roads merged into one formless, impenetrable maze.  The Ghost dragon’s chronologic sensors registered time passing, but it was nothing compared to that indeterminable stretch as the memory-human and his partner fought for the restraint neither had, driving each other further up into madness. Sharing their weight between them, Le’ti hailed a transport and the human tested the sensitivity on the ringed fins on xer spine. It made xer shriek and leap away only to come back and lap sucking kisses onto rounded mammalian ears, the game rising more with every move, high stakes gambling without any loser except the long-suffering transport driver.

They’d almost run through the warm waters around Le’ti’s apartment, splashing through the shallows. Inside with entrance closed desperation calmed and distraction kicked in, once more a race of playful, smirking teasing. Seconds slowed to minutes in the memory even as they sped up outside it, Le’ti’s rich, throaty laugh lasting an hour before it ended on a weak gasp. Hands went exploring, picking at unfamiliar clasps, getting tangled in a length of silvered chained cloth and pulling them both over in imbalanced desire, knocking human forehead against flat shifting collarbone. A snort broke the charged, heavy air, cracking the illusion and making both of them giggle their way out of their tangle, next kiss more teeth and smile than finesse. They’d swapped tangles of fingers and clothing, neither capable of undoing a clasp unsupervised without disaster, but the limitation mixed into the game, hands guided to the right fastenings and awkwardness pushed away with each new press of skin. His naked skin was familiar, all the same pores and joints and tiny imperfections as ever, but with each piece of fabric dropped Le’ti beckoned him forward to enthusiastically unknown territory. Xe put his fingertips in the vague boundary where hair draped over the starts of back fins, humming approval of his hesitant strokes.

They’d kept in touch. Whoever had started the ideal of ashamed, slinking away mornings after had clearly got poor social skills. One more friend added to his contacts list through sleeping together. It had been fun – uncomplicated and easy.

 _Commander Spock individual plays a video._ His monitoring systems said gently, catching him where he drifted in the recesses of his mind.

 _Commander Spock is learning to fly._ He corrected.

_Specified action occurred two point eight weeks ago._

_Okay then_. He didn’t particularly care.

_Commander Spock is point three seven four through the total stored videos tagged ‘Jim Kirk’, ‘Captain Jim’, ‘Captain Kirk’, ‘James Tiberius Kirk’ and other related search terms on the Enterprise’s database. [Assumption: no new videos have been added under those search terms]._

_Jim Kirk is brain-dead._ He pointed out. _There won’t be any new ones._

 _Which is why that is a valid statistical assumption to make_. His systems said smugly.

_Let me sleep._

_Yes_. The intruding voice assented. _Specified action good for you._

_Don’t care._

It was harder to find memories than immerse himself in them. Demenia VI slipped beyond his grasp, liquid and impossible to hold. But there were others. He took the first he could get, satisfied with whatever he could snatch out of blankness no matter how boring.

An alarm at the dawn of too-early. Groaning, bleary movement, the computer restarting its alert twice as it detected the fall back into sleep. Stumbling into his bathroom, desperately glad the there was no one on the other side of the second door in, no one to bump elbows with or worrying about offending when he took a piss. Stripping down and cleaning up, sonics taking care of his body as he ran his razor over his face, blending the two tasks together to save time that could better be spent wandering aimlessly around his room until, quite by chance, he bumped into clothing suitable for the day.

Small snippets of a routine. Ingrained in muscle, taught long to ligaments and tendons not his own, it was foreign, unfamiliar. He could access information dictating the correct greeting to a third-family andorian, but couldn’t remember the doing, the measured bow and display of uncovered head that must have preceded him walking through the gardens, Ambassador from Earth leading the conversation in front of him. There was no sense of the rustling corn in front of small hands being forward or backward from anything else, but by height the eyes he saw from were smaller, dwarfed by enclosing plants.

He wanted one like the first one. A tale to sing himself to sleep.

There was softness there, in that concept. Softness and warmth, brown light, cushioned padding and tiny teddy bear, a fire, warm nearing hot on his legs and an old, gentle embrace. Head pillowed on a lap, blanket over them both.

Laughter from the other room. The smell of wine, sour and unappetising to small noses. His grandfather paused in reading, and it had made him stir, wriggle in discontent as the steady, comforting gravel voice stopped its rhythm. One great hand eased him down, huge against his head, pushing lightly under he was limp again and lulling him into compliancy with small, careful circles rubbed into his skull.

Interruption. His mother’s voice, tired and merry and soft, soft like everything else was. “ _James, are you- aw.”_

_“We’re fine lass. Let us two Jims sleep by the fire. I’ll put him to bed when he’s good and ready.”_

_“Aesop’s fables, huh?”_

_“He’s a clever thing. Understands them.”_

_“I’ll leave you to it.”_

He’d waited a full second and a half, impressive, commendable patience, before he broke with another twisty squirm and a quiet, pouting, _“More?”_

His grandfather hummed. _“Ready then? The Bat, the Birds and the Beasts.”_

The woollen blanket around him had itched, but too distantly to make him want to move. _“I’m listening.”_ It had been a true, heartfelt promise. If he’d had the energy, he would have held up his pinkie finger to swear on it.

 _“ A great conflict was about to come off between the Birds and the Beasts.”_ His grandfather began. _“When the two armies were collected together the Bat hesitated which to join.  The Birds that passed his perch said: "Come with us"; but he said: "I am a Beast."_

_Later on, some Beasts who were passing underneath him looked up and said: "Come with us"; but he said: "I am a Bird."_

_Luckily at the last moment peace was made, and no battle took place, so the Bat came to the Birds and wished to join in the rejoicings, but they all turned against him and he had to fly away.  He then went to the Beasts, but soon had to beat a retreat, or else they would have torn him to pieces._

_"Ah," said the Bat, "I see now. He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends."_

He didn’t need to beg for more; to fight against the adult’s will like usually happened with bedtime. Instead he could flop, full and warm and being patted, drifting along with words like a little stick thrown off a bridge and floating downstream. Since blanket and trouser leg was the only thing he could see, it was just as useful to have his eyes closed.

 _“The Buffoon and the Countryman”_ He snuggled closer.

_“At a country fair there was a Buffoon who made all the people laugh by imitating the cries of various animals.  He finished off by squeaking so like a pig that the spectators thought that he had a porker concealed about him.  But a Countryman who stood by-“_

_Priority One alert: Captain announcement._

That wasn’t part of his story.

 _Priority One alert:_ , his systems prodded, louder and more insistent and not soft at all, _Captain announcement._

His eyes were already opening without his permission, flooded his brain with light and the picture of his unchanged cell. The dragon raised his head off the ground, peering out without any of the disorientation he was expecting, without sluggishness or weakness or anything less than constant alert consciousness. That in itself was disorientating. He shouldn’t have been expecting anything at all. This was the way the world worked, had always worked and would always work in steady, reliable order. Is was as simple as switching on systems that had been on standby, restoring environmental sensors to register the unchanged humidity and temperature of the climate-controlled ship, raising hearing back to normal levels just in time to catch the tail end of a sentence over ship wide communications.

“-mission, the Admiralty has approved upgrades to the biology department, which should help to prevent further tribble outbreaks in the future.” Pike had the particular cadence to his voice that he wore when he couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of his mouth. “We are now docked at the space station above Vulcan, and I will refrain from mangling its name to you all. All crew members are authorised to take three days of shoreleave. Your beloved Captain wishes to remind you all that any shuttles you take must deposit you back on the space station with more than two hours to spare before we depart, or demerits will be handed out.”

Lasted he’d checked, the ship hadn’t been anywhere near tribbles or the planet Vulcan. _How long was I asleep?_

 _Four weeks, five days, six hours and four point eight minutes._ His systems reported.

More than enough time for the ship to get into all sorts of trouble. But if the flight had been used he would have been notified, and he hadn’t, so nothing had happened. Scanning the dragon bay he could only find three, minute changes. The head crest on Spock’s dragon had been redesigned by the unit’s nanorobotics to a sleek, far shorter shape. Sulu’s dragon coiled in a different way on the floor, an adjustment after resettling after flying lesson, probably. And the video playing on the wallscreen at the apex of the room was a different one. In fitting with what the dragon knew about Spock’s general personality, the Vulcan wasn’t one of those minute changes. He had his current recording on pause, head tilted up in the direction of the ceiling speaker.

“Our Chief medical Officer has prepared information packets on Vulcan and its surrounding destinations.” Pike continued. “All crew are required to read their applicable forms before leaving the ship. Mister Scott will be assisting with the upgrades, and has prepared a roster of crew from engineering and science divisions that will be given out through the usual channels. As we are docked with a Federation member planet, no skeleton crew is required. Report to your head of department for further information. Pike out.”

Spock stood to attention until the end of the message. With the dismissal came a short, efficient set of movements, shutting the wall screen down, a new, slightly too clean computer terminal retracting into the floor, shoulders back, spine straight, and like a man going to war he strode out of the room.

In the hills of Nemck, he’d gone to shoreleave in the midst of a pack, a swirl of happy people in known, friendly company. A distant friend from highschool had met up with them, dragged them to the best bar and given the barkeep all the credits he’d need for a month from the gaggle of drinking crewmembers. The stars had been out in the dark world without streetlamps, pretty and dramatic but making him bump into everybody in his path. He’d argued with Sulu about something, neither willing to admit defeat, neither willing to expend the energy to truly snap at each other. His second in command had-

_Query: Second in command?_

His systems were incapable of leaving him alone. _What?!_ He hissed back. _Let me sleep._

_Sulu-organic not leadership individual._

_No._ He resigned himself to explanation. _The dead captain was._

 _Not dead._ The internal systems rebutted.

_Is so dead._

_Invalid argument._

_Is._

_Invalid argument._

_Is. I’m ghosting, I should know._

_You are not. I am Ghost. You are not/do not fit into category/no._

_I don’t think normal people spend this much time arguing with themselves._ He sighed.

For a few, blessed moments he thought the system had gone and that dreaming was once more within reach. But as he stretched back to the shattered scatters of stolen life available to him the voice in his head started up again, inescapable and persistent. _Query:_ _You retrieve shore leave files?_

Retrieving and dreaming were different things, but he wanted to get the conversation over and done with. _Yes._

_Query: Shore leave protocol? Start navigation?_

_Where?_

The dragonbay door glittered as his eyes dilated and refocused on it. _Out._

Out of his cell or out of the Enterprise, or out, maybe, of orbit all together. They looped above a planet he had never stolen sights of. If the dead captain had ever visited it wasn’t a memory he had grip over. A new, unfamiliar, foreign setting. The crew had been told to go. Practically commanded to in no uncertain terms, Pike’s voice saturated with the type of relief only friendly spacedock and efficient repairs could bring. No skeleton crew, the barest minimum of engineers staying on for the repairs, the Enterprise was about to empty like an abandoned anthill, all efficient flurries of activity left behind for a few short days of rest.

Opportunities for any active-duty ship to be so empty were few and far between. Even when docking at planets whose main forms of business were tourism, the Captain had to leave enough crew behind that the huge metal bird and her weaponry couldn’t be accidentally overridden by pirates. After all, one of the most profitable aspects of tourism was the trusting, unsuspecting targets it provided.

But this was Vulcan. Solid, elegant, pillar of the Federation, the ancient race who had made First Contact with Earth in what was for them only a few generations ago. Their red sands echoed with peace and logical, analytical intelligence, cutting minds and unique governmental systems providing the perfect storm of conditions for cities of gleaming metal hanging from the underside of cliffs, masterpieces of civil and mechanical engineering. An entire planet of six billion and not a single prison, a judicial system focused entirely on rehabilitation. In the hangers of the Vulcan Science Academy countless projects far more advanced than he was, an infinity of unknown ideas in neat, labelled rows.

He had no memory of Vulcan, no dreams to lose himself in. And everyone had permission to go. _Vulcan?_

_Destination approved by Captain Pike individual._

_I… yes?_

_Action is beneficial. Approved._

_Fine._ He gave in.

It seemed strangely exposed outside his cell. The air was no different, the walls no more or less reflective than they’d ever been, so he was being stupid. But he’d spent so long in dreams of colour and light that the blank metal tones of mechanical efficiency were cold and foreign. The unblinking watch of Chekov’s dragon creeped him out, its gaze tracking his every twitch. The dragonbay was empty in the way only ill-used, too clean places could be, too bright and sparkling and undisturbed. The hush of his footsteps rang oddly in the never-moving silence. He ducked his way to the huge hanger doors; head low, as small a profile as he could make it. Not like it made any different. Too large and clumsy, every eye in the room recording the tip of his wing nearly hitting Uhura’s gigantic machine.

The dragon bay doors were designed to be operated by both man and piloted machine. It meant twisting his head down awkwardly, but by that point he could care less about the discomfort. With the push of one overly large red button the wall shuddered to life. It cranked loudly. Starfleet’s engineers had been more concerned with speed and effective hull plating than comfort or quiet. The other dragons in the room raised their heads, crests spreading outwards in alarm at his wrongdoing, and the not-Jim-not-Ghost dragon cringed. _They’re looking at me._

_Other Active Response Units not a threat to this unit._

_But they’re looking at me._ He shook his head, pressing back against the fast eroding door. _I’ve done something wrong and they’re looking at me._

 _This unit has not gone against established parameters._ The Ghost system said.

More eyes, too many eyes, tracking and reporting and watching. _They aren’t getting out of their cells and they’re the good dragons, people don’t hate them they are allowed out I’m not they can open door I shouldn’t have-_

_There are no orders against leaving the cell or dragon bay._

_That doesn’t mean I should do it!_ He whirled, catching glimpse of the world outside and the shimmering force field still between it and him before his wings clapped down, throwing him back where he’d come from. His claws caught on the rim of his cell as he flinched back into it, curling his body straight back into the neat ball of metal he’d left it in while he dreamt. Dreams were safer. Fiction was make believe, fiction was harmless, fiction couldn’t make anyone hate him any more than they did. _Not doing that, see, I’m obedient, I’m good, they can’t be angry._

_Specify target audience._

_They, them, all of them._ He whined. _They were here and now they aren’t, because I’m wrong, because I did something. I’m not what they want so they left me. They’ll never come back if I’m wrong._

_There are no orders against leaving the cell or dragon bay._

_Shore leave is for **people**. Planets are for **people**. Tourism is for **people**. _

_Valid definition._ The internal systems agreed.

 _I am not a person._ He explained, shifting his tail to hug his head more tightly.

 _Flawed reasoning._ The ghost systems whirred, adjusting some sort of internal calculation. _Recovery variable recorded. Methodology modified._

 _I’m not going out there._ He locked his eyes shut, reduced the world to safe, near-total blankness. _I’m going back to sleep._

His systems were quiet, silent for long enough that by the time they next spoke his head was calmer, misty memories hovering promising on the horizon again. _Alright._ They whispered, soothing, shutting off non-essential external sensors. The push behind its words was gone, dissipated into nothingness.

 _I can sleep?_ He said, almost plaintive.

_Sleep._

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update! I want to try and keep these relatively constant. Apologies for any errors in the chapter; I don't have a beta, so any you see are entirely my fault.

 

Perhaps it was the disturbance, the rapid seesaw of his internal systems as they veered between comfort and poking, prodding calls to action. It could have been the exposure, the hissing, certain knowledge he’d done something wrong. Or the way he’d put himself, curled up into a ball too tight to even mistakenly be called relaxed.

His dreams weren’t good.

He fell to darkness and desperate lack, happiness torn from him even as he tried to push away in shock, gasping in the depths of foggy memory, as unable to get out of it as it had been difficult to get in. A pit of foreign pain, sharp hunger dulling to the ache that came with time and sustained scarcity. He recoiled from it, forced bone-thin wrists away, closed his eyes to rot and ears to gunfire until it snapped back like an elastic band, filling the world up with the smell of cooked rat, the sour smoke of brunt fur. The taste of it, stringy and half-dead like everything else, the warmth in his fingers as he rooted around picking muscle, skin, tail off of bone.

And it was delicious, a stolen victory so sweet he nearly couldn’t keep it down. He’d held back his gag reflex, choked his unruly throat back. The lesson was ingrained; never let anything back up. He’d only have to eat it again, burning with the taste of his own stomach acid mixed in with whatever it was. And it was just like a hundred other times, procedure blankly undertaken without thought or feeling, memory within memory guiding him in his horror to even further depths of hell. It was impossible not to buckle under the pressure, the endless, constant hunger. He’d never seen someone die of it before, never thought there’d be so much horror in a bloated, misshapen, swollen belly. But he’d also seen it a hundred more times, or would do, or had done, its place on the chronological map warped and unsure. The first to die or the last or someone placed in the messy middle of the tangle of memories and sickness, it didn’t matter.

He wrenched himself out of the foggy barriers of memory before the next scene could play. There was a jolt as he collided back with the quiet, clean, real world with enough force to smack his head against the roof of his cell. Head horns and crested skin impacted, parting metal skin with a stinging, wakeful pain. A shriek lodged in the back of his throat, vibrating the back throat plates in a way they were never intended to produce noise that rebounded off his cell’s walls, ringing in his ears as his head split with pain.

_Minimising damage._ His system reported, shutting down his instinctive response and pushing their body to the floor. The ghost muted their hearing. _Head crest damaged. Unknown sensation._

_Fucking ow._ He agreed plaintively.

_Define ‘ow.’_

_Pain._ He said. _Ow._

_Sensation unpleasant. Logged for later review. Head crest split 89% down middle pane of skin. Query: Initiate repair protocol?_

_Not right now._ He hurt, reality stinging him and memories a rotten sanctuary that rose up unbidden, dark and contagious and threatening. _Talk about something else. Anything else._

_Parameters too large._

_Where’s Spock?_ He whined, inanely and at random.

_‘Sleep’ lasted two point six days. If following voiced schedule, Commander Spock is on planet Vulcan in the company of biologically related organic individuals._

_Vulcan- tell me about Vulcan._

_Vulcan is a class M planet home to the native sentient species Vulcans,_ Ghost began.

_Not the stuff from Starfleet’s database._ That tasted of memory, exams and study, benign but untrustworthy. _Other._

_Query: Retrieve alternate data source?_

_Yes?_

The ghost was silent. He hadn’t meant to make the ghost go silent, not at all, didn’t want his head to be singular and quiet and hissing with what he didn’t want to look at. The pangs of hunger he was not capable of feeling hung in an absent stomach far to intensely before his internal systems spoke again, back from whatever they’d been doing without his notice. And he no longer cared about where the information came from anymore, only that it was there and the ghost was talking, grounding attention away from the dark hole he couldn’t seem to block up in his head. _T’Khasi [Definition/noun; Home, planet, the fourth planet orbiting the triany star system of behr’ak, czar’ak, and alam’ak] is a class M planet in the star system’s habitable zone. It has a sister planet T’Khut and orbits their common centre of gravity, much like a binary star system. It is possible that T’Khut’s natural satellite T'Rukhemai has been exchanged between both planets multiple times, but presently T’Khasi has no natural satallites._

_Is… is that Vulcan?_ He asked, unable to think of a better question, wanting more words in his head.

_The nen-torv-aikum network provided the data upon search query._ The ghost reported.

_I’m not saying it’s wrong. Nen-torv-aikum?_

_The space station we are docked at._

_That’s a complicated name._

A beat before the ghost replied, long enough for panic to begin again. _It translates to ‘Main Artificial Satellite’._

_No one accused Vulcans of being poetic._

_Nam-tor stukh vaik - shaht-fam - ek’svi’ish - veling palikaun._ They said.

_What?_

_Vulcan poetry._

_What does it mean?_ He curled around the presence in his head, its attention close and comforting next to his consciousness.

_Poetry sourced from database faiktra Dzhaya'an'Kahr e’tsis shu-pal and routed through Nen-torv-aikum. No translation available from source. Searching. Query: Permission to integrate?_

_Whatever you want._ Ghost didn’t need his permission. Ghost knew better than him what to do, where to go and what things to touch.

_Integration complete._ The ghost answered almost instantaneously, before he had a chance to realise he could be left alone again. _Nam-tor stukh vaik - shaht-fam - ek’svi’ish - veling palikaun._

And he heard the Vulcan, understood it with a hive of new connections between bits of data. ‘S _pace is infinite/ without ending/ all within it /just beginning’. Huh._ Factual, but poetic in its own way. _What else can we get through the space station’s connection?_

Many, many things. Either the Vulcans had never heard of information security or they were incredibly open about sharing their knowledge, because the Vulcan Science Academy didn’t even ask for identification until he asked after specifications on one of their new designs. Also, the VSA was apparently called Shi'Oren t'Ek'Tallar T'Khasi on the actual planet where it was located, so it was nice to know humans still had enough residual imperialism that they continually erased the name of the most well-known Vulcan institution there was. Or the most well-known Vuhlkansu institution, because Vulcans didn’t actually call themselves ‘Vulcans’, though they didn’t seem to mind aliens using that name.

And even better than science, they had stories. Fletan and Gratan on the plains of the Pam-fon-rik, part history and part roiling, vivid myth he hadn’t thought Vulcans _did_ , ever, at all. The legends of the pre-reform gods, myths of creation and destruction filed with the historical investigations they were associated with, scientists pairing fairy-stories with the far distant past. It wasn’t just Surak, his tales ringing like Aesop’s fables. There were swathes of others, of Vulcans he’d never heard existed and that maybe hadn’t, maybe were woven out of still air and clan gatherings all clustered around a fire and the arguments of historians as they parried and thrust with historical evidence and conjecture, debating the reality of their legends.

Just as soon as he’d filed it all away, stored the stories for the endless quiet he’d live in after the Enterprise warped out of range of Vulcan and its open, gentle networks, the dragon was distracted by something else. Because in Vulcan something could be _olozhikaik_ and _rom_ and _rufah_ and it could all mean about the same thing, logical, but one had no connotation and that other was a good-logical and the last was useful-logical. And there were other sorts of logical, a clan-logical and a unfortunate-logical and a revolutionary-logical but they were all _logical_. So maybe the thirty eight times Spock had said that weren’t all the same.

There was just so much. He could have drowned in it, sunk under all the information and recording and digital footprints of billions of lives, but it was soft, undemanding. The network was responsive, open to any command, but it didn’t want anything in return. A free, uncomplicated sharing of its data to anyone who wanted it. He floated there for a good long time, snuffling contentedly against his cell’s wall, wincing when his nuzzling bumped against his torn and sore head crest. _Much better. So, so much better._

_Query: Happy?_

_Not sad._ He decided.

The ghost ticked over in the back of his head, processing that. _Acceptable._

He relaxed in his little internal world of undemanding simplicity, life reduced back down to what was easy and manageable.

It was another 1.37 days before external sensors registered any change. Ghost brought them both awake; easing them out of the Vulcan Biological Collective’s archived journals and back to the sterile real world. His internal programming made room for him as his attention turned back outwards and he raised their head. It was already almost certain who it was going to be. No one else ever voluntarily came to the dragon bay anymore, not now that the lingering damage from the mess with Khan was fixed, no new flight members to put together, no parties or gatherings or even companionship.

Spock had dust on his robes. Also, he was wearing robes. Red grit had gathered in their creases, leaving puffs of speckling particles in the Vulcan’s wake. His stride was shorter, movements infinitesimally slower than his usual brisk pace, and his hands seemed greener than usual, blood pushed to his extremities in the climate he was born for rather than pulled back in response to the chill of the Enterprise. Or, probably. The dragon didn’t have any sense of temperature, he was just guessing.

Completely ignoring the nameless dragon, Spock paced past him. That scientist halted in front of his Active Response Unit, dropping his bag into the corner of its cell and gripping a horn to lift himself onto his dragon. His unit occupied a cell across and down from the nameless dragon, and Ghost had to stick their head up and out of their cell to get a direct line of sight. Not that Spock cared what he did; the Vulcan was busy talking. Discarding biological journals for another time, he turned his hearing up to listen in. “-traditional to assign a name to machines one spends an extended period of time with.” After more than a day sifting through the nuanced complexity he could access through the network, Spock’s voice sounded even more toneless than usual. “I have been ordered to comply with this tradition. Change identifier: d'rachanya _._ ”

_Query: Did he just name a dragon ‘dragon’?_

_He’s an idiot._ He agreed with Ghost’s unimpressed tone.

Spock was still speaking, which given what they’d seen of him so far, was almost weirdly talkative of him. “Log this identifier change.” The lit up flash of projected blue showed d'rachanya’s compliance.

“Sentimentality, Commander Spock?” The low murmur of a baritone voice appeared completely without warning. Instinctively he tried to startle. Ghost attempted to suppress the reflex, but it didn’t quite work. His movement didn’t go unnoticed, drawing a smirk onto the pale, sharp faced security member his eye alighted on. “How interesting.” Khan commented idly.

Spock swung down, loose-limbed and graceful while he moved only to fall into stiff, regulation posture as soon as the action was completed. “Lieutenant Commander. I presumed your schedule would delay any response for several days.”

The superhuman shrugged. Wearing both the red of security and the aura of menace he carried naturally made his shirt too easily comparable to the colour of blood. “I never left the Enterprise for leave. And in this case, I owe a debt.”

“You do not.” Spock casually undermined whatever request he had for Khan with his own blunt honesty. “I came aboard this vessel approximately 2.79 months after your appointment to your post, and have not had any interactions with you other than the specified Head of Department meetings we both attend.”

“That’s true.” Khan wandered into d'rachanya’s cell, leaning back on the dragon’s hindlimbs. “You certainly don’t actually appear to do anything that’s not work, and you’re one of the majority of the ship that still won’t touch me voluntarily. Although at least with you I don’t expect it’s personal.”

“Then to what debt do you refer?” With Spock’s back to them the dragon couldn’t see the Vulcan’s expression, but Spock didn’t make any denial of Khan’s statements. While touch-telepaths generally didn’t initiate contact no matter who they were interacting with, Khan’s record of violence implied bad things about the state of his psyche. It wouldn’t make him a good candidate for a cuddling session.

“Answer my question, I’ll answer yours.” The smirk grew wider.

“Upon learning of the completed construction of my Active Response Unit, my mother requested I name it in accordance with Terran tradition.”

“That’s not a very Vulcan thing to do.”

“She is human.” Spock said blandly. “I am dah-komakik rish-ha-vel.” His stiff-backed posture didn’t lessened, but prompted by Khan’s obvious confusion Spock explained further. “A bigenetic hybrid. I am of both human and Vulcan descent. You were not aware?”

“Vulcans and humans don’t even have the same colour of blood.” Khan frowned. “They can’t breed together.”

“Extensive genetic engineering was required.”

“Your family is that rich?” The security chief chuckled, but something about the set of his shoulders was uneasy.

“Ah. You wish to ascertain the rumoured influence of my clan, and whether it poses a threat to you.”

Khan laughed. It lacked the involuntary muscle contractions that would be associated with real humour. “I was given to understand your people weren’t skilled at subtext.”

“I was raised by a diplomat and a human parent. I am fully capable of understanding the intentions and colloquialisms of other beings.” Spock said. “I recognise your causes for concern. My last assignment was under Admiral Marcus’ command, and my clan exerted undue pressure to position me aboard this ship, where I have seniority over you.”

The way Khan’s fingers were arched was distinctly like the position most people would use when holding a phaser.

Spock continued anyway, proved his complete lack of survival skills. “However, I did not support Marcus, nor was I aware of his clandestine operations. I made use of my clan’s influence because the admiralty would not approve my transfer request, and as I programmed the safety protocols of the Active Response Unit I am the most qualified to ascertain where they failed.”

The two organics watched each other.

“It is your turn to answer.” Spock prompted, hands still behind his back and the recent emphasis of his clan’s power hanging in the air around him.

“Perhaps you share a similar debt than, if that’s why you came to this ship.” Khan lost none of his wariness as he smiled. “There was a large mess.” He launched into explanation without hesitation, a speech that sounded almost rehearsed. Each word brought coiled tension to his outwardly laidback frame, a not quite voluntary sharing of a story told in a light, uncaring voice. “By the time I was brought in by the Enterprise, I was missing several internal organs, and much of what remained was in markedly _incorrect_ positions. Reliance on the unfinished transwarp beaming device had as good as gift wrapped me for capture, and the ship that caught me was equipped with the prototype dragons that Marcus _adored_ as a pet project.”

The dragon could remember it. The misshapen bulge of Khan’s stomach when they picked him up, a concave stretch of skin over what had once been a rib bone, a kidney, half of a liver. Bones had put him under partial anaesthesia, opening up Khan’s chest and removing the kidney and rib bone from where they were pressing down in the skin of his belly next to his appendix. He knew that because Captain Kirk had watched it, interviewing Khan while the doctor rummaged through his numbed insides.

“I know now that Captain Pike wouldn’t have killed me,” Khan said, “but I owe my life and the lives of my crew to Kirk’s refusal to hand me over to Marcus in the USS Vengeance when it came for me.”

“That is your debt.” Spock had the same slight indications of concentration in the grip of his hands behind his back and tilt of his head that most people had when confronted with advanced calculous. The Vulcan might have been taught to comprehend the emotions of everyone around him, but it didn’t look like something that came naturally.

“When they brought his body in-“ Khan gestured for the first time, a twitchy shake of a hand that didn’t mean anything comprehensible. “I’d been introduced violently to the ceiling of the medical bay. And the walls. And several large pieces of medical equipment. Whatever painkiller they had me high on was pretty damn effective, but I was quite personally aware that the ship’s internal gravity was malfunctioning. I still don’t understand why his head was…”

“Linked pilots have no awareness of their bodies.” Spock picked up the sentence. “When falling most beings will instinctively protect the head, but-“

“His mind was busy so he didn’t notice being smeared on that wall.” This time Khan’s flickering hand had a purpose, pointing towards the clean, sterile surface of the wall at the end of the dragon bay, above the corridors connecting it to the rest of the ship. “Maintenance should never have been allowed to fix it.”

“Captain Pike reported that it was causing emotional instability in the crew.” Spock commented mildly.

Khan grimaced, but turned back to his story. “I saw his body come in, and I was aware of what I owed. So I gave my blood – the doctor didn’t even hesitate, it was that bad – and it should have healed him. But it didn’t.”

“You do not know why.” It wasn’t a question, more like the closest thing to a sigh he’d ever heard from Spock.

“No. I can’t help you.” Khan’s hand stopped moving with all the sudden halt of someone only belatedly realising what the darting of their limbs gave away. “I figured I should tell you in person. Not that Vulcans have hopes to disappoint, I suppose.”

“Indeed.” Spock acknowledged with one of his strangely slow nods. “It is unfortunate that you lack insight into the medical consequences of your condition, but not unexpected. Doctor McCoy has almost certainly already interviewed you on this issue regardless.”

“Yes, well, if you’re running out of options, you revisit what you know.”

_They’re so awkward with each other, it’s almost funny._ He sighed, watching the conversation play out like a rigged tennis match.

_Absurd._ The ghost classified.

“The most likely possibilities have been explored and discarded.” The way Spock spoke was halfway between agreement and stubborn argument.

“So in layman’s terms, there’s not a mind in that beast.” Khan pointed at him. The dragon twitched his tail in return, a polite acknowledgement of the attention, however indirect and from someone unknown to him.

“Yes.” Spock nodded.

“I find that odd. Every other dragon turned its head when I came in here-“

“ARU01 has not recorded movement in one month, zero point eight nine days-“

“-But it startled.” Khan interrupted over Spock.

“Not possible.” Spock didn’t even turn to check, blank and sure of himself. “The ship’s mainframe has a program monitoring the guided movement of Active Response Units to send alerts to my account. The artificial intelligence inside an ARU relies on its connection to that mainframe to ensure stability in any new coding and assist it in any movements made without connection to the piloting officer.”

Khan stared at the dragon. The dragon blinked back. “You… think it isn’t moving?”

“Correct. I do not comprehend the purpose of that query.”

Maliciously, with the tension in his body falling away under sudden good humour, Kahn’s lips quirked up. “Then, Commander, let me be the first to report the uselessness of your program.”

Khan held out his hand in offering, finally turning Spock’s head to look at their observer. Politely, the dragon waved the tip of his tail at them both, interestedly watching the strange flush of green blood spreading across Spock’s ears. He retracted his teeth before smiling at them, following the lessons he’d given d'rachanya.

 “I…” Spock didn’t go beyond the first word, discarding whatever sentence he’d been crafting. “This is not expected.” One hand lashed out and he crouched down, picking his padd out of his forgotten bag without taking his eyes off the nameless dragon. “I have not received any alert or notification. There is no communication logged in the mainframe.”

Khan, mildly smug and truly at ease for the first time since entering the dragon bay, rippled his fingers in a tiny wave.

The dragon flared his head crest in reply, and Spock dropped the padd he held. “The unit is damaged.” Now the padd was too, but the scientist seemed less concerned with that, stalking forward with intent. Flaring his head crest felt different without the connective middle skin in place, more like fins than a frill. “I do not understand, it has not moved, it cannot have been damaged.”

“But it has been.” Khan said. “Does-“

“I apologise, I must examine the unit at this time.” Spock didn’t even turn back to talk to him. Rude. “If you have further questions they can be directed at me during the time allotted for meals.”

“No, I think I want to see this.” That was definite amusement being taken at Spock’s expense. The dragon wrapped his tail around Khan’s arm when the security officer outpaced the Vulcan and reached him first. “See, it likes me.”

“You have been implicated in a mass genocide of Earth’s history.” One of Spock’s eyes twitched.

“I’m _a_ Khan, not _the_ Khan.” Khan sniped back, flashing teeth as he began to stroke the metal coiled comfortably around his arm with his free hand.

The dragon had never seen Spock’s eyes that wide. The phrase ‘bugging out of their sockets’ was too crass for a Vulcan, but even the cloudy second eyelid was fully retracted. “Do not contaminate the research subject.”

Ah yes, the _research subject._

_Query: Why is Spock liked?_

_Good question._ He glared, and making his opinion clear, swept his wing down. The great metal sheet cut off the stupid Vulcan and the majority of the light in the room, more so when he brought his other wing around to complete the barrier. His teeth slipped out of their sheaths, barring their displeasure.

Khan had stopped petting at the sudden movement, most probably a typical organic response to rapid stimuli. The dragon huffed, reassuring the flighty human through gentle pats with the tips of his tail, patiently waiting for petting to resume. “Commander, did it attack?!”

“Bath'pa.” Spock swore under his breath. “I am unharmed. You are also?”

“Yes.” Khan free hand caught at the tail patting his head, fingers probing at its slippery shape. It felt good, but the dragon was aware that it was probably threat assessment, not affectionate touch. “I was under the impression these creatures couldn’t move that quickly.”

“They are more than capable of it.” Spock poked at the dragon’s wing membrane. The dragon flipped up a spike from where it lay seamlessly with the rest of his skin, thwacking Spock without enough velocity to do any damage. “Without a pilot there is nothing in the internal program that would prompt any excessive waste of energy.”

Khan snorted, an undignified noise that was the most genuine sound the dragon had ever heard from him. “You might want to check that internal program.”

“I cannot.” Spock began moving around the outside of the tent of wing, testing for weakness. “That was one of the first aspects of my investigation. ARU01 did not response to the request from the mainframe to allow access to its code.”

The human’s hands tightened where they held him, pinning his tail away from Khan’s head. Khan tugged at the hold the metal around him had on his arm. “You have no idea what it’s doing or why.”

“Crude but essentially correct.” Spock had found where the two wings were pushed together to form the protective barrier. There was something purposeful about the way he pulled on the metal skin, testing it.

“The dragon has my arm.” Khan admitted, pulling back on it. But Khan had been the one to first offer his touch, even if just to provoke Spock.

“I will be with you momentarily. Do not panic.” Spock’s fingers gripped tight over the dragon’s metal skin. Two wings pushed together provided plenty of handholds. Before the dragon could hiss at him he was up and over in one fluid, controlled move, hauling his body over the barrier to land unsteadily on the pile of metal limbs and irked dragon behind it. The dragon was just out of range to smack him with a head fin. They turned their head in the small, increasingly confined space, glaring at the annoying Vulcan. “It does not appear to be harming you.”

In trying to get to a position from which to smack Spock the dragon nearly collided with the tip of his own tail, bumping into Khan’s free hand on the way. It made the twitchy human try to pull back even more, a mess of himself and Khan and Spock jumbled together in the dimly lit space behind his wings. Enough was enough. He couldn’t keep Spock out, the human had stopped patting and started panicking; there really weren’t any good reasons for barricading himself into his cell. He flipped his wings up, letting sterile light flood back in to every corner as he dropped Khan’s arm and stood up, toppling Spock from his unsteady perch in the process.

_I’m just a research subject?_ He folded his feet under himself. _Fine. I won’t be touched and everyone can carry on thinking I’ll hurt them, and Spock can do his_ research _, so at least then he’ll be happy._ Because if he couldn’t keep Spock from clambering all over him the least he could do was stop the interesting stuff the Vulcan wanted to examine him for. He seethed inside as he froze all outward movement, stopped the unnecessary breathes and the blinking and the tiny twitch of his tail. Just being cooperative, just laying himself out as the ideal subject to be sliced open and peered into at will.

“You broke it.” Khan huffed.

“I did not- Why is it not moving?” Spock seemed twitchy, his movement fast and jerky. “The extraneous breathing action has stopped. There is no cause-“

“You must have pissed it off.”

“I cannot have-“

“You said it was a research subject. Apparently not even machines like to hear that.” In a way that totally didn’t prove Khan’s point, the dragon rolled over away from the organics, breaking his statue impression for better dramatic effect. “I once had a prissy cat that did that.”

Glaring at the wall, the dragon prodded Khan with his tail in retribution.

Khan caught the offending appendage, capturing it with both hands. He ran his fingers along the length of metal given to him, scratching lightly, and the dragon quickly stopped any plans to take it back. Whatever unspoken contest there was between Spock and Khan, at least he benefited as a side-effect. “This worked well with the cat, too.”

 “Why are you doing that? Why is _it_ doing that?” The exclamation lacked any gestures, not a twitch of movement accompanying the jagged-edged questions. Spock’s body was still under iron control even as his voice cracked with alarm.

“It seems to like it, and it’s as large as a house, so I’m all for anything that doesn’t provoke any more temper tantrums.” Khan retorted, snippy and very good at giving just the right amount of scratching. “The dragon’s insanity isn’t my fault. Of all the many, many problems you can blame on me, this isn’t one of them.”

“Please cease contact with the unit.” Spock’s fingers grasped at empty air, the padd he was practically attached to lying with its screen cracked back in d'rachanya’s cell.

“He started it.” Khan seemed to remember his first reasons for touching the dragon. Regaining a gleam of amusement in his smug eyes, he poured himself over all available bits of metal, face turned to better see the Vulcan’s reaction.

“The Active Response Unit has no gender.” Spock’s jaws clicked shut tersely.

_Hey,_ he protested.

_Wrong._ Ghost agreed in silver certainty. _You are you and I am I. You are he and I am something, but together we are they._

Even if it was difficult to decide that. Even if it had started as a tangled, confused mess of identity without the awareness of two. It had been a long hard effort to sort the _theys_ and _thems_ from the _him_ and the _Ghost_. Sometimes when he did things it was still _them_ doing it with _their_ wings or _their_ legs but he still knew he was a _himself_ and not a _theirself_ , that when it was them moving their wings it was them as a plural. He could have not been a him, but he was. He’d decided on that, chosen it. He lifted himself off the ground, raising his head and torso to sit up and protest.

It caught the immediate attention of the organics. Khan flinched upright from where he had draped himself across dragon tail, eyes immediately focused on the renewed potential threat. As pleasant as his touch was, it didn’t come with any more trust than anyone else ever had in him. The dragon was still a large, dangerous monster to be treated with caution. Khan just had confidence in his own ability to escape, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet ready for flight or fight. The line of Spock’s posture was more resigned and confused than nervous, but that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t afraid of Khan either.

_We need words_. Ghost murmured.

He didn’t have that option. He’d never had that option.

Instead he flared the left side of his damaged frill and ducked his head, pointing to Khan as obviously as he could with the very limited range of movements that wouldn’t cause panic. He had fingers on his wings, hooked claws that were as precise as every other microscopic section of him, but the second he showed those the organics would run.

“This is too strange.” Khan held eye contact as he retreated, backing away out of range. “You’ve got no idea what the dragon’s been doing. There’s no one to kill or donate blood to, I’m really not necessary here.”

“I did ask you to leave.” Spock replied, also without taking his eyes off the looming dragon.

“My debt does not require me to endanger my own life. The creature moves too fast, and I can’t break through metal of that thickness.”

Neither Spock nor the dragon spared attention for the security officer’s excuses. Khan’s attention had been pleasant, contact alluring and drugging after months of nothingness, but he’d touched the dragon to annoy Spock. Being cornered into explaining his debt had made the violence seeped weapon as vicious as any animal who wanted its foe just as discomforted and vulnerable as itself. Pointing out the dragon, touching him, talking to him, it had all been an exercise in baiting the Vulcan. However nice the unintended consequences had been for the creature he touched, just as soon as he did something too odd and too independent Khan was gone, just like every other human.

However Spock, as proven by his blunt interrogation of a genetically engineered known madman, had no survival instinct. “Does this indicate a preference of gender pronouns?”

The door to the dragon bay slid shut as he flared his head fins.

“Male gender pronouns?”

More flaring.

“Fascinating.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some explaining! All of this should be able to be inferred from this chapter, but that sort of depends on how well I've done my job. Also the POV I have for this story is very confused and limited, so it might not be working. Anyway...
> 
> * Vulcan exists! Because getting rid of an ENTIRE ESTABLISHED PLANET with all its lore and culture and the work of thousands of hours of artists and linguists was a DICK MOVE JJ. And also pretty pointless. Nero hasn't shown up in this universe yet (beyond Jim's birth/his father's death), nor Spock Prime. Presumably Nero's out there somewhere waiting for a portal to open. That Romulan has too much time on his hands.  
> * Admiral Marcus (and several other collaborators) were alarmed enough by the info they had on Nero's ship when it appeared briefly in front of the Kelvin for the first time that Starfleet has been trying out all sorts of new technology, trying to play catch up. This is why the dragon flight exists - the dragons are almost an attempt to make the Enterprise into a space-aircraft carrier. Dragons aren't capable of warp, but 'fly' faster then any manned ship can at impulse. Its hinted at in this chapter (and a couple of others, I think) that the dragons took down Admiral Marcus' ship.  
> * Yes, Khan is on the Enterprise. He's the Head of Security, actually, which is why Spock's acquainted with him.  
> * Yes, someone thought it was a good idea to adopt Khan.  
> * This someone was, unsurprisingly, Jim. Khan is allowed on the ship, half parole, half babysitting. God knows Starfleet didn't know what to do with him after the Marcus scandal, and Bones thought Khan's blood could still be useful, so he's stuck around since then.
> 
> Mostly important in this chapter is that I can finally reveal how Kirk got hurt. Similar to the movie, the Enterprise starting have internal gravity issues during the fight with Marcus' ship. Kirk's body was in the dragon bay, but his mind was piloting the dragon. The size of the dragon bay combined with the gravity problems threw his body around a bit, to put it mildly. Like Spock says, most creatures try to protect their heads if they fall, but Kirk was effectively unconscious. He suffered massive amounts of brain trauma, in addition to a whole lot of other more normal trauma, and hasn't woken up since. 
> 
> Comments and discussion is so appreciated! Often in past stories I've gotten inspiration from people commenting on chapters, or been able to fix a glaring hole I somehow wasn't able to see myself!


	6. Chapter 6

He waited, the tip of his tail tracing twitchy, impatient circles in the air.

Inside Ghost logged another second passing, another moment of time closer. Like the inevitable inward crawl of the tide, his heightened hearing caught the first clacking footsteps on the edges of their radar. Organics stepped with a predictable, unique stride. Their gait could be used to match them just like a fingerprint and this was a rhythm he had recorded, one that was always carried out at the same exact time in the same exact way. Given enough repetitions Spock would wear a groove into the floor if no outside force disrupted him.

This outside force had solemnly taken that duty upon himself. He crouched, grinning, and waited for the doors to the dragon bay to open.

Right on schedule. Spock kept to his timetable the way most beings kept to religious texts, entering the dragon bay only three point seven seconds away from the time recorded the day before. The dragon leapt at him, clambering crashingly across the floor in a headlong rush of greeting that stopped itself all of three centimetres from Spock’s blue shirt, air puffing out to lift up the Vulcan’s hair into disarray.

It said something about both Spock’s steadfastly calm nature and the amount of times they’d had this morning routine in the two and a half weeks that there wasn’t the slightest flinch from the Vulcan. “I see you are performing as expected.”

_Good morning._ He returned uselessly, communication still something of a work in progress.

Ghost hummed, moving their eyes to peer at the little display device in Spock’s hand. _I wonder what that will be used for._

_No clue_.

They backed up, giving Spock room to breathe without his chest bumping in to the tip of their snout. Spock didn’t wait for them to go any further, clambering over various dragon limbs with his normal innate grace. It was tempting to stand under him and move him about that way, drag the Vulcan over the dragon bay with Spock’s weight sprawled on his back, but he wasn’t a domesticated animal, and the idea edged just a little too close to demeaning for the dragon to truly consider it. Instead he followed his Vulcan to the normal spot in front of the wide end wall. The wall that no one referred to as the place where Captain Kirk had died but was still, he was pretty sure, thought of as that anyway. Not that he had a large pool of recorded reactions or anything, but even Spock seemed to avoid looking at the place two thirds of the way up and over to the side.

_You’re morbid today._ Ghost coloured the corner of his mind with silver, curling and curious.

He shrugged, both a reply and a literally shaking of the emotion, throwing it off himself. _I’m fine._ The scales on his neck rippled, standing straight up as they stretched before lying flat again. It temporarily exposed a rush of information to the sensors beneath.

With them, he knew without looking that Spock had put his device down on the floor. “ARU01.”

_I don’t like that name._ It was a mutual thought, tinged with the irritation of not being able to communicate anything better. They turned themselves around at the call anyway.

Spock’s little box of mystery was active, blinking with a blue light. Placed straight onto the floor it projected a screen – not independently holographic, but at least outwardly similar to every other projection that came from the Enterprise’s screens and computers. Scaled up to dragon size and taking over ten square meters of floor space, the little box made a very big picture.

He nudged his head close to Spock and sighed into the Vulcan’s hair, making his curiosity known.

“Resist touching the display for one point six minutes.” Spock said. “I must finish calibrations.”

A text box popped up on the floor screen, followed by four buttons underneath. It looked like a multiple choice test.

Five seconds earlier than his time estimate, Spock turned away from the floor display to hold eye contact with the dragon. “I am able to enter questions and answers into the program currently displayed on the floor screen. The first question will be one you have already answered, to ensure your comprehension of this process.”

The screen radiating out from the little device changed as Spock uploaded text. It was the pronoun thing they’d covered when Khan had visited – four options of female, male, non-binary, and other presented in clear text on the ground.

Careful of the pressure he used, the dragon poked the ‘male’ button with the outside edge of one of his wings. It lit up, as expected.

Not that interesting, but potentially useful. He swung his head around to Spock, wrapping the Vulcan’s hands in metal tongue and dragging him away from the padd he was busy writing notations into.

“I do not know what you are requesting.”

The dragon pulled on the hands he had trapped, guiding them down to the four buttons on the floor. Spock was smart, he’d figure it out.

“You wish me to complete the same question?”

_Bingo_. Spock’s file listed his pronouns as male, but it was only polite to ask. Some people like Gaila changed from time to time, or had small exceptions that they preferred. And it was almost standardised behaviour from Starfleet personnel, as used to working with different varieties of being as they were. Spock tapped the ‘male’ option, and left the dragon’s grasp to go after his padd. It was an unsurprising result, but worth checking.

There was a sliver of interest from Ghost, worming into the back of his brain. _Is it the same?_

_Spock’s the same._ He confirmed.

_Not my query. I am a he. You are a he. Spock is a he. D'rachanya is a he?_

That was actually a really good question. _I don’t know_. The spines on his back flared as he considered it. _Should we get D'rachanya to answer too?_

He was moving before Ghost even sent his shiver of agreement, padding with purpose towards the statue in the cell across and down. D'rachanya raised its head as they approached, eyes tracking the movement which had set off its proximity alarm. Ghost was the one to reach their head forward and close their jaws around D'rachanya’s neck, teeth carefully tucked away. They pulled gently, trying to coax D'rachanya the same way humans did to the pilotless dragon, pushing and prodding and generally just expecting the machine to follow. It worked about as well as any gentle pressure on several tons of metal worked. The dragon huffed his complaint into the closest metal spine, tightening his grip. The next pull brought a squeal of protesting metal, but no movement from either party. He narrowed his eyes. Back feet pushing hard on the ground, the dragon shoved his way into D'rachanya’s cell, squashing its owner under his stomach. D'rachanya readjusted under the load, an automatic weight redistribution under pressure, and the dragon squirmed, taking advantage of the temporary space to lever himself in close to the back wall, behind his target. Putting himself there stopped D'rachanya from moving back into the space, and the young AI inside lit up the cell with its projected confusion, code streaming down the hologram on its snout as it tried and failed to understand why its bedroom was suddenly occupied.

“Enough.” Spock had his padd out, the little blinking light on it that meant it was recording. “You are being disruptive to another Active Response Unit. What purpose do your actions serve?”

He stuck his head out of the tangle of dragon limbs. D'rachanya immediately stepped on him, probably not by accident.

Spock wrenched his attention away from his fantastical padd. Magically, super weirdly, D'rachanya stepped off his head. Calmly, and with far more coordination, the other machine stepped out of its cell and sat behind Spock, who looked suspiciously frozen for an organic.

_Spock can pilot wirelessly without his body collapsing?_

_Interesting._ Ghost started up some scans. _Highly likely to be caused by Vulcan mental discipline._

With both dragons untangled, Spock resumed the blinking and fluctuations in heartbeat and eye movements of a normal organic.

The dragon moved before Spock could repeat his question. When he picked up the device on the floor it shut off the projected screen. The question and its four answers came back when he put it down in front of D'rachanya, a little lopsided. He nudged at it with the tip of his snout, and then for extra emphasis grabbed D'rachanya’s nose and tried to get it to do the same. The other dragon was still about as cooperative as a brick wall.

“Fascinating. You wish for D'rachanya to answer the question presently on display?”

He jerked his head up, not seeing any matching understanding in the blue eyes the exact same shade as his own.

Spock froze again, the normal twitches and irregularities even Vulcans possessed draining out of him as he linked with his dragon. Ghost brought them forward to watch the organic more closely. Spock’s apparent ability was a sight that tipped over from just interesting and into disconcerting. Pilots were able to link with their dragons at any time, but only with a great deal of effort and training. Having the nanorobotic web implanted took less than an hour of non-invasive surgery, but it took months of piloting with a dragon before the organic partner was able to link without needing to be strapped in to a control booth. Captain Kirk had seen Sulu do it once, watched the slightly alarming sight of the other pilot dropping limp like a puppet with his strings cut. That had been the only time Kirk had seen it from the outside, every pilot in the flight deeply preferring the stable harnesses nestled in a room protected deep in the heart of the ship. Spock had to have gotten some experience with those at some point; he hadn’t seen the Vulcan anywhere in the dragon bay the first time Spock and D'rachanya linked. But the dragon could see the logic behind the contactless link. Traipsing up to the booth room just to send whatever message Spock had for his partner was a stupid waste of time.

The Vulcan came out of link between one abnormally regular heartbeat and the next, padd swinging up at the ready. “First officer’s log: Supplemental. ARU01 has made actions indicating that additional participation in previously reported experiment is requested. This may encourage further communication, the possible extent of which is unknown at this time. Additionally, putting another Active Response Unit through test conditions will provide a point of comparison. I do not know if the unique behavioural patterns in ARU01 can be replicated. To facilitate this secondary goal, all communication between ARU11 and the intranet of the Enterprise has been disabled and the unit will remain unpiloted during testing, to mirror the variables experienced by ARU01.” Spock making logs wasn’t at all surprising. Most of the Vulcan’s behaviour could be predicted with a cursory glance at regulations; he just hadn’t heard him making one before. Spock stepped back, indicating with the sweep of his palm for D'rachanya to start.

Eyes wide and limbs rigid, D'rachanya took the few, sparse, faltering steps necessary to take the other dragon to the question laid out on the floor. In the blue code that lit up for its snout, flaring through the projected screen, he could see it struggling. Angle, pressure, force – it streamed through, a torrent of coding as D'rachanya calculated without the mainframe to provide support. But there weren’t any attempts to open the door in its mind that Spock had closed, no confusion in its intent. Unlike him and Ghost, someone had taken the time to warn it.

Just seeing it reach the question display felt like watching an achievement, the first truly independent movements he’d ever seen another dragon make. D'rachanya looked down in consideration; it’s still default length head crest pointing up elegantly.  The observers behind it waited, patient and polite and wriggling their head fins in anticipation respectively. _Select preferred gender pronouns from given options_. The text was reflected in the blue screen projected up off D'rachanya’s nose, flashed up and then immediately buried in the piles of coding that followed as Spock’s partner considered its options.

D'rachanya didn’t use its snout to reply to the question, keeping its own projected screen away from touching the one on the floor. But all four limbs were currently occupied in the exceedingly complex task of staying upright, so it was a tail tip that eventually cautiously tapped an answer. Mirroring his pilot, the dragon selected male pronouns.

“Fascinating.”

_Fascinating._

_Oh shut up, I don’t need two of you._ He huffed.

_It is interesting. Is D'rachanya male because that is what he is, or is he male because that is what Spock is?_

_At least we can stop thinking of him as an ‘it’._ He padded forward, congratulating D'rachanya with a pat on the wing and catching him before that much pressure on his unsteady limbs could make the other dragon fall over. _That felt weird. Can we ask all the others?_

Ghost swept their gaze along the other cells of the dragon bay. _I don’t expect so. Spock seems to think a unit needs to be disconnected from the mainframe to answer truthfully._

_Speaking of our Vulcan._ He swung their head back around.

Spock’s fingers twitched over his padd. “Start log. Subject ARU11, henceforth referred to as ‘D'rachanya’ until any preferences are stated, has completed movement without the guidance of the Enterprise’s internal systems. This exceeds the expectations of the Active Response Unit. ARU01 is likely to have experienced coding alterations, as not only has it been deployed in combat; but the pilot James Kirk is highly likely to have modified the unit himself. There are noted incidences recorded in his files for altering the programming of his dormitory, the fleet of autonomous campus transportation vehicles, three flight simulators, at least twenty automatic doors, three computer terminals, the campus security internal communications system-“ Spock cut himself off. “Computer, delete last sentence.

“Captain Kirk has proven himself an exemplary hacker. All recorded incidences of programming alteration that can be traced back to him were only discovered in the internal investigation into all known associates of Admiral Alexander Marcus.  All have been deemed harmless, but they demonstrate Kirk’s capabilities. However, D'rachanya is subject to default coding and default physical appearance, excluding the additional instruments on the snout. The projected terminal technology cannot have affected his capacity for movement, as none of that hardware is in or related to that field of robotics. Therefore his capacity for unguided movement is unexpected. He has also stated, like ARU01 that his preferred pronouns are male. Until such time as those preferences change, those will be the pronouns used to refer to him. Observations ongoing. Computer, end log.” With the acknowledgement of the padd the Vulcan put away his experiment tone, abandoning the clipped cadence of observations to be recorded and re-examined for a looser voice. It still lacked the emotional giveaways and flavouring of non-Vulcans, but the dragon had been exposed to Spock for long enough to recognise the less tightly controlled pacing of words and the more dynamic sentence lengths as Spock’s version of casual. “This has been unexpectedly informative in a variety of ways. You have my gratitude for your cooperation in this endeavour.”

D'rachanya sighed, and it would have been difficult to see the happiness in the sound had it not been for the blue projection from his snout. _Someone really needs to teach him a way of turning that off._ Ghost hummed.

The other dragon’s joints locked up, going from a balancing act to solid statue. _D'rachanya’s given up on the ‘moving’ thing then._ He said. _I’m actually impressed he lasted this long._

_Movement without the guidance of the mainframe is complex._ Ghost agreed. _He appears to have copied the frozen behaviour of his pilot._

_The weird thing Spock did when they linked?_

_Yes._

He could see the resemblance, especially as Spock came forward to examine his partner. There was a taste of curiosity to it. The oddity of Spock’s body standing stiff and upright without the accompanying mind verged on the unnatural, but when D'rachanya did his best impression of a piece of furniture he couldn’t actually decide whether it had the same effect.  Perhaps it was because the mind inside was simply turned inward, not transplanted elsewhere. Spock took some sort of recording, measuring the effects of his experiment, just slightly out of range of any possible collapse of dragon limbs.

When they saw the Vulcan going into link again, Ghost crept them closer, one wing out to scoop Spock’s abandoned body out of the way. _Stop worrying, he’s not going to crush himself._

_They might._ Ghost argued back, flaring with undue protectiveness. _The body is fragile. They are disorientated._

_Shut up, mother hen._ On the projected screen off D'rachanya’s snout diagnostics begun to run, the ticking over of thought displayed there speeding to a blur with the addition of another mind. _I think it’s sweet Spock’s checking up on D'rachanya. Proof of a certain emotional fondness, perhaps?_

_He can’t hear you teasing him._ Ghost sniped.

His reply was a little less than words, a short dump of irritated acknowledgement.

Testing continued apace, now with another projected-floor-screen thingy for the additional, far more cooperative subject. He got bored, or Spock looked to be doing something vaguely interesting, or it became desperately important to pounce on D'rachanya and do his own experiments on the other dragon’s improving balance skills. However D'rachanya seemed to want nothing more than to please his pilot. Spock hadn’t quite gotten to the level of using his partner to forcibly drag his more errant dragon subject into the next comprehension test, but there was definitely a certain amount of D'rachanya being used as bait going on.

Ghost just sighed, silver-resigned, and stopped him from trying to roughhouse within twenty meters of Spock.

The Vulcan’s tests were, by nearly any measure, endless. With the door in their mind still blocked shut, Spock remained unable to peer inside their head, so vision, hearing, pressure sensors and navigation were all tested as Spock defined the limits of what he and Ghost were able to sense. Once it was established that they hadn’t spontaneously generated any extra abilities and that their results were the same as D'rachanya the mind games started. It began insidiously with reading comprehension, scrolls of text projected over half the dragon bay that forced him to stick himself in mid-air to avoid touching something he didn’t mean to. Most organics didn’t seem to properly comprehend that if a dragon capable of quantum flux pinning itself didn’t want to fall, nothing was going to be able to make it. Spock wasn’t most people, so wandered underneath him without any apparent concern. Conforming to skittish, paranoid precedent, Ghost freaked out at even the slightest possibility of the Vulcan getting hurt, despite having full knowledge of the massive power pooled away from their long inactivity. Floating motionless above their test for the next decade wouldn’t have been an issue, and overriding the pull of the ship’s artificial gravity didn’t take nearly as much effort as doing the same to hang in the air above a planet.

Ship’s time meant little in a room forever brightly lit, white light casting a permanent and unchanging glare though the bay. It was more significant to track time with Spock’s visits, starting a countdown from the moment the science officer’s polished boots left the room, ending it each new day as he and D'rachanya heard the measured gait and padded to the door in anticipation. Over longer periods time was delineated by the type of test displayed on the floor; the shift from reading comprehension to examination of his memory. The flashing pattern of different coloured lights had to be replicated in reverse sequence. He lasted to a sequence of twenty three before Ghost had to take over, and then Ghost lasted to a sequence of seven hundred and sixty seven, after which Spock shut the tester off and went to bed.

He and Spock had a small argument over the image comprehension tests. He pinned the blame entirely on Spock, who was honestly incapable of distinguishing between different breeds of dog. The debate was resolved semi-peacefully when he suspended the Vulcan from the ceiling until the useless scientist searched the net for an answer, and all testing was subsequently detailed for days as Spock got sucked into the black hole of domesticated canines. While it was slightly weird that a miniature poodle and a St Bernard were the same species, it was weirder that Spock felt the need to research twenty different sources to confirm that fact.

The listening comprehension tests were interesting primarily because Spock had to do the talking for them. Both dragons were prompted into doing separate examinations, the same test but sat two different times, which was probably cheating. He could have looked over D'rachanya’s shoulder and committed his answers to memory, making the tests useless, so clearly Spock wasn’t so great at every aspect of organisation.

And then there was a day, when the listening tests were almost due to be over and Spock was almost due to arrive. It stood out. People came into the dragon den, red and yellow and blue all together, crawling over every other dragon in the bay and flinching from his cell with averted eyes. Spock was not one of those people. No one told him anything, not even in overheard conversation, shoulders tense and work quickly done until the organics could flee back into the bowels over the great ship without looking back. He knew the moment Spock linked with his partner, D'rachanya’s extended hearing flicking back to normal, blue screen running with thoughts. So Ghost took them out, snout reaching out, head fins spread in questioning. D'rachanya’s projected thoughts wiped over to blank nothingness, a message preparing to type itself out with agonising slowness.

The statue dragons clanked.

Wings flung down, legs pushed off, and he threw himself back to his cell before the echo died. Pinning his head fins back did nothing to mute sound as other dragons moved, other dragons who were _other_ , not D'rachanya, the frozen blank watchers coming to life. Pilots were linking, awakening, invading as their minds reached out from the shielded booth room and connected the robotic web nestled round their brains to the waiting shells in the dragon bay. He couched, Ghost folding their limbs into the default resting position and turning their head to stare blankly at the room. Unremarkable and safe, just a statue that wasn’t activated. Nothing of note, nothing to hate or kick or abandon.

He stayed, folded like a paper crane, through the sounds of dragons taking flight, through the gentle thumps of landing on their return. Through the hours after it, poised just like the other dragons, not even the whisper of air flowing in and out of him, throat still and silent. Without a countdown, with hearing set exactly on the default and eyes straight ahead, Spock was already in the dragon bay before they sensed the Vulcan.

D'rachanya did his test for the day. They did not. They stared at the wall of the cell as he fought the urge to tense and Ghost tracked the other cells in the room. Spock said something, some careful phrase, but they were too busy behaving properly. Spock left and there was still no countdown.

They could not close their eyes, but he could sleep. Ghost protected, Ghost watched, and so he could fall, uneasily, fretfully, into dreams. Ready to disentangle and fight the pull of memory if needed, if the threat of dust and rat meat swelled, he pushed to better things. In stolen memories of a dead man there was happiness, a time when the wall at the end of the dragon bay hadn’t been shiny and computerised, when in the corner there’d been a mess of pipes smuggled from engineering and hastily covered with shit every time Pike came down, even though the Captain knew full well what an illegal still looked like. It was better for crew morale if they didn’t have to relocate it before every inspection. Captain Kirk barely left the dragon bay, but that corner of the room was carefully ignored in all official reports.

Always, there were people. Playing poker, stealing Sulu’s swords to chase Bones from one end of the bay to the other, running from the engineering crew when they turned up with water guns after a stopover at a starbase, the dragon bay had been just another rec room. Someone had brought a couch down and nearly gotten it stuck in the doorway as they tried to carry it through.

And now there were not. In a flood the organics had fled, the misty illusion of family drifting away until only Spock remained, the lone sentinel on forced duty. No one stayed. No one ever stayed. They were ripped away, by pressure or expectation or their own damn choice. They were taken from him. They were snatched from his arms, from his protection one by one, pulled away where his thin arms couldn’t reach them, their bodies left to rot in the buildings, his perfect, starving children. He loved them so fierce with such pain as he fought, but there was hunger, hunger, always hunger he could not hit with fix or steal from. They looked fat, the belly swollen, malnutrition’s final joke to play. Before this it had been guns and phasers and Kodos, but the universe had found a new way to kill them. They caught the rats which came afterwards, roasted them on a fire. When more rats came they caught those too, never moving far from the corpse. While the body was there the rats would come, faces splattered with blood, and then the humans would catch them and the humans would be blood-painted too, and it all worked until he saw gleaming newly uncovered bone in Tracy’s dead wrist. That had been the first time he’d needed to reswallow food, scoop up the charred meat slurry and hold it back in.

He lurched, retching, fighting against the long ago, caught in the sinking undertow of horror. Silver responded to his distress, a bright consciousness tearing him from his head and shielding him in data and numbers, Ghost pulsing with worry, and all over the back of his tongue burnt meat, chewed stringy connections between bone, the smell of charred fur in his nose.

_We don’t have a sense of smell. We don’t have a sense of taste._ Ghost enveloped him, shoving him back to awareness. _This body is metal, this place is not there._

But it was twisted, warped in his mind. _My kids, they took my kids-_

_It’s alright, it’s over. The atrocity on Tarsus IV was discovered, Starfleet sent relief, the massacre was ended. Your children were rescued._

**_Starfleet took them too,_** he howled, _the doctors lied, the doctors took them from me, didn’t let me see them, drugged me and sent me to **sleep-**_

_No, no,_ Ghost channelled him away, pushing him from those memories as they rose, trapped and lonely and desperate to pull him in to them, _you don’t, that isn’t good for recovery, they will hurt you._

He could fly there, he could rip out the door of the bay and stream into space, dump his pent up energy and rage into finding those medical ships. He could rip them apart until the computer surrendered their classified coded secrets, find his children, find where Starfleet had hidden them. He could rip open their hulls and fire into them, scorch the walls that had kept him from his kids into dust, and he could feel his potential building in his throat, igniting, threatening, hissing from his belly to burn and kill and tear.

_Emergency protocol 18A, you must wake up youmustwakeup._ Ghost screeched, valves slamming shut in their throat, the rest of their body twitching uncontrolled by either of them. _Please, please, please do not. Don’t fire!_

Ghost whirled in silver storms of panic. Fire, hot, bright, white, endlessly brilliant, enough to melt the strongest hull walls, sneak in along imperfections and cracks to rip the whole structure apart. Not exactly simple combustion; but spewing from a dragon’s mouth more than enough destruction to earn a name to match Earth’s legends. _Fire?_

_You, you’re doing it, please stop._

His throat was blocked, his sternum churning. _You’re stopping me._

_We’re sitting in a cell enclosed on three sides we do not want the blowback from that!_

_I…_ It was not a good idea. He wanted it, but setting the room ablaze around him would hurt their skin, burn the robotic layer. It would hurt. And even if, perversely, he wanted that too, Ghost didn’t. The blazing pads on his tongue retreated their colour, dimmed back to dull silver. He folded the sparking ignition pieces back into his tongue, sucked the repressed potential for destruction back from his throat to dissolve back in his luminously blue blood. _I… hurt._

Warm pressure, relief and an attempt to comfort. _I’m sorry._

_I don’t want to sleep anymore._

_That might be wise._ A glimmer of ruefulness. _The variable has been noted. Recovery model adjusted. Starting countdown, adjusting for time since Spock left._

_Thank you._

_D'rachanya is watching us._

He sighed, letting the taste of impending fire dissipate with a new indrawn breath. _Let him._

Together, silently, they watched the numbers tick down.

With five figures still on the clock, routine was over turned. Barely an hour after the countdown was started, a rapid, light foofall came into their hearing range. It matched Spock’s gait, but sped up, on the verge between walking and breaking out into a jog. _When did we extend our hearing?_

_Part of normal countdown procedure._ Ghost explained. _Why is Spock here?_

_Your guess would be as good as mine._

_We’ve done something odd again._ Ghost said with dull metal surety.

The statement rang true, given everything in their history. He stopped their breathing, slipping back to the frozen, regulation correct posture they were always supposed to be in as they waited with impending resignation to hear what they’d done wrong. The rapid tap of boots on floor sped up, Spock bursting through the door into the dragon bay in light, elegant, out of character flight. The tricorder in his hands sung high out of reach of human hearing, scanning and searching for something that it found and beeped about.

“Traces still present.” Spock growled, voice a full octave lower than usual and sleep roughened. “It is definitely-“ he whirled, glaring dangerously, “D'rachanya was correct.”

He flinched his head away from Spock, breaking regulation pose so that he wouldn’t have to look the Vulcan in the eyes. Because yes, almost setting off a projectile weapon inside the dragon bay hadn’t been a good idea.

“Riolozhikaik. Ek'riolozhikaik.” Spock stared at his tricorder, alternating between that and the dragon until he slumped, hair and limbs in disarray. “Why am I _never_ present when the extraordinary occurs?”

He flattened his head to the floor, neck twisting up awkwardly.

“I do not-“ Spock stopped in the middle of his own sentence. “I still do not know why you have hoarded power tools. You sit on them; you do not appear to value them. I do not understand why D'rachanya has chosen to identify as any gender. I do not know if your gender identity is relevant. I do not know why I cannot look at your codes. I do not know why you stop showing reactions in response to the stimuli that I do not understand. Never in my entire life have I known less about the details, route to, and parameters of my goals. Never.” His fingertips reached out, stroking long lines of pleasurable pressure on the scales of the twisted neck. “I do not know if I can help you. If you are there to be helped.”

Those weren’t angry words. Spock sounded lost, voice confused and still gravelly from sleep. And he petted, fingers looping in aimless spirals with his arms dropped lax on the dragon’s side, almost-but-not-quite Vulcan script trailed into metal scales. Slowly the dragon began to breathe again.

“The residue is still detectable. Both D'rachanya and a tricorder have independently confirmed it.” Spock’s throat tipped back. “You were going to fire. Only dragons linked to a pilot are capable of firing. But you are not linked to Captain Kirk. Therefore you cannot fire, yet the residue in the air shows that you can, and must have approached doing so. And it had to have come from you,” Spock blinked, his opaque white sets of inner eyelids not quite opening again, speech slow. “You are the only dragon that breathes.”

_Ah._ Even if one of the others had been about to fire, they wouldn’t have breathed residue out. It would linger in their throats, around their unopened mouths, but he breathed, so the remaining unreactive chemicals in his throat wafted out to linger in his cell. _Shit._

_Spock isn’t leaving._ Ghost reassured.

He huffed, untwisting his head and dropping a wing over the bundle splayed across his side. _No, he’s asleep. I’m not sure if that counts._

_Spock is good. He will not leave._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have made my own life very, very difficult by deciding to apparently include at least some vulcan in every chapter. No matter. I brought this on myself. 
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated! Because I really need to gets some inspiration to finish this damn thing before I run out of chapters to use as buffer. So yelling at me about this makes me write more of this - it's a win-win situation.


	7. Chapter 7

Their sensors registered Spock’s change in breathing pattern. Well before the Vulcan showed the slightest hint of opening his eyes, the dragon he sprawled on was back to regulation perfect posture and holding its breath.

Spock made a near-inaudible grumble as he sat up. “I need to determine what occurred last night.”

They stayed perfectly still.

“I apologise for falling asleep. Vulcan sleep cycles are deeper than many species, and without an immediate threat it is difficult to remain conscious.”

That explained a lot. Spock really had to have been out of it to want to sleep on a metal bed.

“Please do not do this.” Stress and all the tiredness sleep should have scrubbed off leaked through Spock’s tone. With his head turned the dragon couldn’t see Spock’s face. “I will work to rectify whatever has caused you to shut down, I guarantee it. I cannot do anything useful if you are shut off. Please do not.”

He gave up the act. Face turned down in unhappy grimace, head fins curved low to the floor, Ghost brought their head around so near to Spock’s arm that his hand disappeared from view, swallowed into an empty corner of vision in the same way they couldn’t see their own cheek.

“Thank you.” Spock ran the back of his hand over their cheekbone. “I will call up footage from the ship’s computers. Are you capable of making a gesture to indicate where your… unease began?”

They could try. But the first instance of panic hadn’t been subtle, a headlong rush to huddle in their cell as the other dragons woke up, so Spock had probably already picked up on that. There wasn’t really a trigger for the second. He’d slept and dreamt of all the things a dead man had lost, been dragged into the undertow of poisonous memories of a starving world. He knew exactly what had made him want to fire, but there wasn’t really a way to explain it to Spock. He shook his head.

And he loved Vulcans, he really did, because there was no disappointment in Spock’s face. “As comprehension tests have not progressed to the point of writing, I am unable to predict whether communication though such channels is possible.”

He translated that to normal speak, then asked Ghost about it. _Can I write things down?_

_Broca’s area compromised. Unknown._

He lifted his head fins, attempting to suggest that they could try it.

Spock had an iffy grasp of body language on a good day, but a near perfect Vulcan memory did at least mean that he didn’t forget what gestures he had managed to decode. Head fin rising had always been positive in the past, so meaning trickled through. “It would be possible?”

The dragon shrugged, and was subjected to a very confused Vulcan head tilt until he revised his body language to a nod.

“I will retrieve the equipment.” Spock swept out of the door, not exactly leaving any room for argument.

Ghost monitored the doors opening and closing in Spock’s wake as a blue screen thrust itself in front of their nose. D'rachanya hit their snouts together, the thoughts scrolling down projected blue air revolving around concern and the lingering detection of ignition chemical. It shifted, displaying D'rachanya’s observations of abnormalities in the environment around him, then back to worry.

_Ghost?_

_We have only ever seen Spock use the projection technology for messages._

_I think this counts as a message._ He snorted.

_But not a written one. From the focus displayed D'rachanya appears to be concerned we are acting abnormally. Similarly to Spock, actually._

_We never behave normally._

_We haven’t ever tried to blow something up before._

He conceded the point.

Spock came back with hair fallen neatly into its usual shape and the display device he used to write tests out on the floor. By connecting that to one of the pop up computer terminals a keyboard splayed itself down, shape and letters familiar.

“Will this suffice?”

He nodded, head still low enough to the floor that his head fins brushed along the ground.

Keys on the keyboard lit up as Spock typed on the corresponding computer terminal. “Copy the test word.”

‘Example’, Spock had written, outlined in clean white above the keyboard. They padded forward, the tip of their snout easier to type with then their encumbered arms with wingsails weighing joints down. All he had to do was press the letters in the correct order to produce the word. He understood what the word was, how the letters added up to produce it. Confidently he pressed forward, tapping nose gently to keys and sitting back to observe the result.

The scramble of letters he’d made wasn’t even the same length.

He erased the gibberish, poking at the backspace with his tail, and tried again. His nose was too big, perhaps. He brought his wings forward and typed with his right set of foreclaws, more carefully, more precisely, nudging at the exact centre of each key. When he glanced up at what he’d typed it was an even longer smear of incomprehensible gibberish.

“If you cannot do it-“

He shoved Spock aside, curling his tail around the organic and pushing him out of sight. He knew what the word meant. It wasn’t _hard_ ; beings around the galaxy did it every second of every day. He could _should_ , but, when he looked back up, the result wasn’t what he was so _sure_ he typed, not a word but a string of meaningless numbers and letters.

Of course he was broken in this way too. _Of course._

He slammed his claws down, raking through the surface of the floor. The computer measured that touch too and it made a word a lot closer to ‘example’ than anything he’d written.

_I’m trying to fix it._ Ghost said. _I thought it was complete enough, I thought it might_ _work, I’m sorry-_

_Not your fault._ He wanted to hit something.

“Release me.” Spock ordered from somewhere behind him. “We will attempt a different method.”

Success was about as likely as hearing Spock laugh. But they were a good dragon, one who obeyed orders and did what they were supposed to. Eyelids drooping, closing their vision into smaller and smaller circles, they slumped and waited. Spock’s hands made soft little ploosh noises as he typed, flesh rebounding off the terminal’s keyboard. D'rachanya was scanning the crushed power tools piled up against the back wall of their cell, making surprisingly little sound for a dragon they’d seen learning to walk without much success.

Tiles flashed up on the floor, images instead of letters. Most of them were photos, but they were interspersed with a few cartoons and one badly painted figure that could have been absolutely anything and looked like it had been done by someone too young to colour in-between the lines. “The images will be replaced at thirty seconds intervals by randomly generated examples taken from the interplanetary network search engine, unless you have selected an image by touch.”

It made sense, in a clunky and awkward way. The incident with the dog pictures proved he could use images in a way he apparently couldn’t use words (and also that Spock only had the vaguest knowledge of Earth’s most common pet). He nodded his agreement, and pressed down on the selfie of an Andorian girl giving the camera a thumbs up.

“That gesture is a sign of many emotions.” Spock noted, with the slight Vulcan undertone of a man frustrated by a galaxy unwilling to stick to one clear cut meaning. “I make the assumption that, due to its pairing with your nod, you mean it as assent and approval of this method of communication?”

_This isn’t going to work._ He shut his eyes, but their face wasn’t made to be able to screw them up. Just closing them produced absolute darkness, mechanical precision and the engineering perfection of his body shutting off his vision more completely than anything. He could fold his head frills over his face and curl up into a ball and tear through the floor to dig an alcove the exact same shape as his head to hide in, and it still wouldn’t make the darkness behind his eyelids any different. When he bent his head, rested it upside down with his forehead on the floor, the pressure felt wrong. His sensors were, of course, perfect, but it still felt wrong. _I can’t do anything. I can’t type without the letters dancing around without me meaning to. I can’t even think of how a word looks without it being fuzzy and wrong. Spock’s solution is fucking charades; of course it’s not going to work._

_You don’t want to try?_

_I don’t want this. I should and I know that, I should be trying and I should be doing what he wants me to and I should want to talk to him but I can’t and we tried and I just want to go to sleep. Not that I can anymore. Bad idea._

_You can’t blame him for not knowing exactly what you’re trying to say._

_No._

_But you do not want to continue._

_No, I can. I’ll be fine._

_You do not want to,_ Ghost sighed. _Come on. Leave the screen. We will find something else to do._

He gave up. Ghost pulled them up and they abandoned the floor screen, turned their back on the changing images and trudged back to the cell. D'rachanya was still there, examining where he’d nearly decided to blow himself up. He forced himself in under the other dragon, stretching out under the pressure of D'rachanya’s weight and burying himself under metal wings and limbs. It was a wall against sterile rooms and watchers and Spock’s inevitable disappointment. Ghost turned down their hearing so that he didn’t have to hear Spock’s footsteps fading away.

D'rachanya weight trapped him effectively against the ground as he settled on top of the new flooring. Their flight systems would have been more than enough to wrestle them out of the tangle of dragon limbs, but they didn’t have anywhere to go. He couldn’t sleep and he definitely couldn’t dream, but the contact was an acceptable substitute. There was both a deep itch to move and not, despair at his inaction wrapped in apathy and frustration and blended into a deeply unhelpful mess. Just about proof of his utter uselessness. He wanted to tear at the floor, rip gouges into it and catch his claws on the sensitive wiring underneath, tear it all up and force the organics to come back just to fix it. His arms ached, wingsails itching with repression after months and months and months of never stretching them, of containing himself in a small space and playing nice and boxing himself in only to be ignored continuously as a background decoration without meaning or opinion. Disregarded and tossed in the corner as the gravestone he never asked to be, decaying into hunger and flame until he couldn’t even answer a question when it was asked of him, all agency and consent stripped into a dumb beast.

His breath hitched, and he crushed down the impulse as soon as it appeared. Because he was trying so hard and failing so much and he wanted the solace of sleep back, lingering in happy times and rose tinted glory. _Please make it stop Ghost, I don’t want this. I didn’t used to care like this._

_I’m trying._ His partner shivered, grief and loss and hope. _I can’t stop now._

_I think we’re talking about different things._ He wormed his snout further under D'rachanya’s shoulder blade. The other dragon coiled their tails together.

_We aren’t,_ Ghost said with the clear cut accuracy of a machine.

The door to the dragon bay opened. D'rachanya shifted, thoughts running to recognition and happiness. It was more than enough to identify who it was, as though anyone else regularly stepped into the land of metal monsters. He uncurled his eyelids, the bait of company far too strong of a draw. Almost like an addict, willing to do just about anything for the presence of another, for company and distraction from the white dissatisfied noise inside his head.

There was something jitterish about the way Spock carefully avoided the torn metal claw marks in the floor. It could have been the reminder of the instability of his subject; it could have been the strange houseplant he was carrying. For all that the dragon knew Spock could have been reassigned to another ship or gotten a message saying the planet Vulcan had been sucked into a wormhole; the Vulcan mask of extra neutrality was firmly in place. D'rachanya knew something they didn’t. His head shot up from where it was resting on the wing of the dragon underneath him, crest flaring in interest. Both forelimbs disentangled themselves, creeping out of the cell to push and pull rhythmically at the ground. Ghost raised their head to see beyond the weirdly flailing limbs, frowning between D'rachanya and his pilot.

In yet another strange occurrence on what was becoming an outlier of a day even on the skewed and distorted graph of life he had, Spock seemed to recognise whatever it was D'rachanya was doing. “Fascinating. You have borrowed that behaviour to signal anticipation.”  

As soon as Spock came within range D'rachanya’s flailing stopped, the entirety of the thoughts running down his snout screen centred on the plant nestled safely in Spock’s hands. Spock shifted his dragon’s forelimbs aside, sitting neatly on part of somebody’s shoulder as D'rachanya replayed a visual file to himself. Being huddled under the other dragon didn’t seem like such a wise strategy anymore, not when his snout was less than a meter from where Spock sat. Brown eyes met his steadily, wiped free of judgement or anger.

“This,” Spock’s fingers tapped on the moss covered pot of his plant, “is my kan-sailau. In literal translation, a child companion or child accompaniment.” One of D'rachanya’s arms was slowly inching closer. “It is given to Vulcan children while we are adolescents. Each clan traditionally has their own species of plant they gift. This is the way whl'q'n learn to meld.

“It is a misconception that psychic contact is limited by the sentience of either of the recipients. Many species of fauna native to my homeworld can be deadly to aliens who have not evolved shielding against telepathic attacks from wildlife. Plants are not sentient, yet when a child receives their kan-sailau they feel the hunger for the three suns. They are introduced to the endless stretching outward for water and the budding itch of new growth. If the child fails in their care so too will they feel the wither of heat and thirst, the pain of death as branches die to keep the stem alive.

“A kan-sailau is uncomplicated in its thoughts, but every child learns to respect it. We learn by joining with it to anticipate its needs, to recognise a rot on its leaves as its immune system does and coax its roots into the most effective places.” Arm apparently too gigantically obvious, D'rachanya untangled his tail. Spock let him run the thin metal tip over the plant’s pot, dipping gently into the furrows and uneven bumps of what wasn’t a clay pot or plastic covering but woven, living roots. “There is nothing I have encountered more peaceful than the mind of my kan-sailau when it is sated. It is a simple form of contentment, but I value it. In meditation I can use that calm as a refuge.”

And fine, if Spock was a drug then the Vulcan was offering an intoxicating hit of distraction and fascination. He stuck his tongue out, running his chemical sensors along the base of the plant where roots were threaded into a flat surface, keeping himself from even the lightest pressure. Spock let him. Ghost held their tongue flat, gently running their sense of touch over the largest possible area, and Spock let go of the plant altogether, letting it rest on their tongue as D'rachanya coiled his thin tail tip around its leaves.

“I know you are distressed.” Spock stared at the plant. “I recognise that my capacity for providing emotional comfort is extremely limited, and that therefore this attempt may fail to be in any way useful or of any assistance. It is also based entirely on my own experiences and thus highly biased. However my kan-sailau is the second most comforting presence I have experienced, the first being my mother, whom I do not have available. If it would please you, you may have it here.”

It was simultaneously emotionally retarded and really sweet.

D'rachanya nudged at Spock’s shoulder, snout lighting up with a question. When it wasn’t responded to he nudged again, sending Spock swaying until the Vulcan grabbed his head crest for balance. Spock’s heartbeat slipped into disconcertingly regular beats as the hand on D'rachanya’s crest tightened, holding his body straight for the few seconds of link before pilot and dragon disconnected again and Spock reached out for the plant.

They drew their tongue back, dislodging D'rachanya’s tail from its loose position in the leaves.

“I am not attempting to retrieve the kan-sailau.” Spock reassured, the short effort at comfort distorting his voice. “D'rachanya wishes to know what the plant thinks of him.”

That was slightly more okay.

Spock parted the curtain of leaves with one hand, the other reaching in gently to rest on the pale stem. With even less ceremony than linking with D'rachanya his eyes slipped shut, muscles relaxing around his face for three point six seconds while he communed with the metaphorical forest. “You are a gentle inanimate object.” Ghost poked their tail into what they expected would be unprotected stomach, only to bump into a pair of ribs further down than they should be. “You both are.” Spock amended. “As neither of you produce heat, the plant cannot differentiate between you and the abiotic environment.”

It was still a cute plant.

When Spock stopped talking there wasn’t another voice to replace him. That didn’t mean a lack of interaction, D'rachanya’s spiralling, entirely plant-focused thoughts on display, their two tails tangling in the leaves of the kan-sailau as both dragons examined delicate organic structures. It just made the room lapse into familiar silence. Slowly, with the sort of care rightfully given to all precious artefacts Ghost lowered their tongue and the plant on it to the floor. He curled their tail snugly around the woven root base, steadying the kan-sailau so that it didn’t tip when the metal under it was removed.

D'rachanya shifted his weight, clambering off of the tangled limbs he laid on, the plant he was so enamoured with given a wide berth of protective space around it. Doing so dislodged Spock, which answered the question of who the Vulcan had been sitting on. Showing agility that was clearly the consequence of being pounced on by them so many times, D'rachanya managed to avoid both organic obstacles. Once free D'rachanya folded himself back down, forming a semi-circle around the edges of the cell and gazing at the kan-sailau adoringly.

_That’s getting a bit weird._

_He does seem to like it._ Ghost said, the understatement in his tone almost deafening. _It makes Spock’s gift of it to us more meaningful._

_What do you mean?_

_D'rachanya knew what the kan-sailau was before Spock explained it. He adores it because though the link he knows how Spock relies on it._

_Shared memories._ He caught up to Ghost’s reasoning.

_I think so._

They untangled themselves, and Ghost curved them into a neat mirror of D'rachanya’s posture. Then he ruined the effect by flopping down in a boneless heap, but for that short second they’d been perfectly symmetrical. Ghost’s feedback was a benign buzz of irritation, not quite enough to be truly disturbed by the way that both dragons no longer matched each other, but a little indicative of a desire to match them and D'rachanya up like a paired set. The kan-sailau ended up just a little closer to them than it was to D'rachanya, and Spock on his feet a short distance away.

“I do not understand why either of you did that.” Spock said.

He shrugged. As far as he knew, neither did they.

One eyebrow crept to dangerously high levels. “What does that gesture mean?”

He shrugged again, because shrugging was _shrugging_. It didn’t mean anything, beyond being the visual equivalent of ‘um’.

One of the muscles in Spock’s ear twitched.

_Please don’t make a game out of teasing the sole remaining visitor we get._ Ghost tried to cut him off before the impulse could form. _That may influence the recovery badly._

_Recovery from what?_ He asked suspiciously.

_Catastrophic injury._

_I’d hardly call a torn head crest catastrophic, Ghost._ He snorted, and shrugged again, just so see if he could make that eyebrow hit Spock’s hairline.

It turned out that Bait The Vulcan only worked for about three hours. Three hours, twelve minutes and thirty two seconds, plus or minus a five second window of uncertainty as to the exact time of realisation according to Ghost, who really wanted to insert a more accurate timeline into his every stray thought. Either Spock had reached the end of his impressively big pool of patience, or it really had taken the poor straight thinking man that long to grasp that the way his experimental subject was winding him up like clockwork was highly deliberate. Ghost had a little bit more faith, but he leant towards the latter. They were still arguing about it in the privacy of their head when Spock stalked off to sulk, lips tightened into an irritated flat line.

Spock didn’t take the kan-sailau with him. He wasn’t too upset with them then, just driven up the wall and out of the dragon bay. And possibly the teensiest bit bruised from having been tripped up by an innocuous looking metal tail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Uni. Ugggggh. So updates might be a little sporadic, partly because I'm busy uni-ing, and partly because being busy is going to eat up my buffer of chapters. Please let me know what you think of this! Yell at me about how fun confused!Spock is! It's a wonderful feedback loop, the more you guys talk to me, the more I end up writing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, finally. Let's get this plot moving, people!

It was strange, to be so bound by biological rhythm when neither dragon in their little circle around the kan-sailau had any such programmed restraints. He was made such that left to his own devices he could have remained conscious or sleeping for as long as he liked. The missing weeks of dreaming hadn’t felt weird at all. He could go straight back to them if he wanted to – and promptly get bitten by trauma again, but the ability to do so hadn’t been lost. Just the inclination to.

But even without any need to follow what the organics did and while living on a starship that technically operated on a twenty four hour schedule, the times when Spock was not there were filled with inactivity. They weren’t able to talk to D'rachanya, nor the other dragon to them. D'rachanya’s snout lighting up with thought processes was communication, but not a mutually undertaken and understood exchange of information. Disturbing the mirror image flanking the kan-sailau felt wrong, somehow, especially given the rapt attention still begin paid to it by the body reflecting him. He wasn’t sure how Spock saw the thing; as a pet, as an anchor, as a childhood teddy bear, but the small bundle of green growing and encapsulating living roots had to be pretty significant. D'rachanya looked at it like it could solve every single one of the problems on board the starship it was carried in.

Spock was now overdue by two hours, forty five minutes, and seventeen seconds. Eighteen. Nineteen. Add or subtract one point four minutes for organic variability, but Spock’s lateness dwarfed the margin of error that had up until then been perfectly accurate.

It was out of character, unprecedented. Spock was on time in the same way caesium atomic clocks were, not as precise as the laser powered light fluctuating clocks were, but doing his damn best to be. He practically lived in the dragon bay, of course he did. His experimental subject and his artificial partner were both there; the computer terminals were accessible and as integrated into the Enterprise’s intranet as any of the scientific laboratories. No one else hung about in the cavernous space to distract him from his assigned task. It had ease of convenience, solitude, his work and his partner in crime all in the same place; of course Spock spent his time with them.

Except of today. There had to be a reason for that. If nothing else, Spock should have come to check on the kan-sailau.

Spock continued to not be there.

It continued to be weird.

Eventually, they did disturb the circle of near perfect symmetry. Ghost brought them round to poke at D'rachanya, swinging their wing down to block his view of the kan-sailau until his gaze lifted up to focus on them.

_Where is Spock?_ If anyone knew, it would be the dragon linked to the irritatingly absent scientist. Though it wasn’t like they had anyone else to ask.

_He can’t hear us._

He sent a pulse of exasperation in Ghost’s direction. _I know that. There’s a limited range of reasons why we’d come and disrupt the kan-sailau love in, he’ll work it out._ It was actually a pretty strange gap in their capabilities, the inability to talk to one another. Nearly every conceivable contingency had been covered in the design of the Active Response Unit, yet they weren’t able to communicate on even a basic level.

D'rachanya did notice them, his head frill spreading out in a questioning sort of gesture. Almost a second later, he refined his posture with a tilted head for extra emphasis.

They spread their wing, lining it up with the door.

D'rachanya’s eyes dilated.

The lighting conditions within the dragon bay hadn’t changed so that had to mean something.

_Please let it be Spock._ It would take time for Spock to come, if he was coming. Calculable time, measured in Spock’s long legged stride and the distance from the officer’s quarters (variable, mean taken) to the turbo lifts, the average speed of non-urgent traffic as the lifts descended, the stretch of hallway between the lift and the dragon bay doors. Account for variation, for crewmembers greeting him in the halls and for the likelihood of wait-time for a free turbolift. Approximately 1.42 minutes, margin of error 13.2 seconds. So when they waited for two minutes and Spock still wasn’t there either D'rachanya had misinterpreted them or Spock was currently deviating significantly from predicted places of origin. He glared at D'rachanya, but D'rachanya was staring at the door. So probably the second option, if they weren’t the only ones anticipating imminent Vulcan arrival.

He heard the sharp beat of ungodly polished fleet issued boots, and his shoulders slumped in relief.  They crowded forward, D'rachanya pressed after them to obstruct the entrance in a tangle of wing sails and heads, and the door slid open. “I cannot stay.” Spock climbed between the two massive bodies without thought in what could have been pre-emptive warning from his partner but was probably just the result of prolonged exposure to the antics of metal beasts. “I must return to Captain Pike before he finishes his meal. If I was not ordered to desist while he consumed nutrients I would still be explaining the logic of my argument.”

_He’s being awfully curt._

_Something is not according to predictions for him._ Ghost agreed. _This is why he is not according to predictions for us._

They swung round, clamber over and past Spock to twine their tail gently under the kan-sailau and lift if back for inspection, proving that every leaf on it was healthy.

“I see that you have not harmed the kan-sailau.” Spock nodded jerkily and waved his hand over an interface. The wall beeped and obediently pulled a terminal from the floor, Vulcan fingertips flying over it before it had even finished rising to its full height.

_That was not what was wrong._ Ghost put down the plant carefully.

They peered over Spock shoulder and watched the rapid flicking screens of information he dug through. Into Starfleet’s internal databases, authorisation code unlocked anonymous medical records, past incidence rates and through ship safety statistics and straight into case files. A search box was expanded and categories ticked off, injury occurring in the line of duty, treatment on board ship, recovery > than sixty standardised days, attending medical officer on board, patient nonresponsive.

_Prime law subject fits into category._ Ghost murmured as the computer formatted a list of results.

Spock flicked the first article onto a second projected screen. His eyes ran through lines of text for five point three seconds until the result was abruptly discarded, a new one taking its place. This file was swiped in a different direction, settling as the first of a newly forming pile. Rejecting and preserving, Spock steadily began to tear through the search results, the majority of case files he pulled up useless and abandoned within the time it took to read the first few paragraphs.

Ghost wrapped the thin tip of their tail around Spock’s wrist.

“I do not have the time to interact with you.” Spock tried to pull his hand back, already reaching around with the other one to continue his intense study.

Ghost lifted their tail, but not to release the Vulcan. Curling it around Spock’s body he hoisted the organic into the air, forceful enough that Spock’s hands were torn out of reach of the terminal.

Suspended several meters into the air, Spock’s eyebrows inched downwards. “This is not a game I wish to participate in. Put me down.”

_What’re you doing?_ He asked.

_Irregular. Outside of expected modelled behaviour. The prime law subject fits into category search._ Ghost focused in on Spock, thought processes running in disarray but stubbornness threaded in universal. _Explanation required._

“Release me.” Spock demanded again.

The well of patience he normally had for them was apparently dry, because the Vulcan body went limp as D'rachanya’s stiffened with the addition of another consciousness. The pilot didn’t pause for long enough to stop the blue holoscreen running on their nose, and it flashed with urgency. Metal foreclaws prodded at the outer edge of the coiled metal around Spock’s vacated body, another tail trying to insert itself between them and the body Ghost carried. Ghost spread their wings, mantling in angry confusion in the jerky movement of a fast processing machine, and just as quickly as he’d left one body Spock left the other. He heaved back upright in the coils of their tail and D'rachanya darted back, running code of confusion and dismay.

“Let me go.” Spock gritted his teeth at the end of his sentence, shoving ineffectually at the trap around him. “I must return to Captain Pike. “

He lowered their tail to the ground, but Ghost stopped short of releasing the grip they held over the organic. _Ghost stop, joke’s over, Spock doesn’t like being kept from his work._

_Explanation required._

Spock met his glare steadily, though the expression was actually directed inward. _He’s busy and we don’t have the right to keep him here._ If they lost Spock’s affection, that was it. No one else would come within range to be tempted into interaction.

“Release me. Now.” Above where metal tail had him coiled and pinned, Spock’s hands rubbed at his sleeves. “I only have three hours, twenty two minutes and thirty seven seconds before the USS Maui docks. Captain Pike refuses to concede to the logic of my arguments.” Again he tugged at their tail, failing to move it. “I need to correct Pike’s orders, his opinion. In less than four hours Kirk will be transferred to the care of the Maui and I lose any remaining possibility of helping him.” Deep behind their glowing metal eyes, panic began to curl. “Release me!”

Ghost flicked their tail off and away from him and didn’t arrest its motion, letting it bang into the wall. It left a long shallow mark and an echoing clap of noise behind. _No. Impediment to recovery._ In their shared head the curl of panic wound itself tighter. _They would do that. Of course they would do that._

_What?_

_Impediment to recovery._ Ghost repeated blankly.

“I need evidence.” Spock reached out to the computer he’d been torn from. “Other patients have been kept aboard the ship they served on after critical injury.” As he talked he modified the search parameters, recovery > than 180 standardised days.

_We should comfort him._ He swayed forward until the suggestion was abruptly stopped by Ghost’s will.

_No._ The program snapped. _Bigger concerns._

_What, Kirk?_ He shrugged. _Kirk’s gone. His body isn’t all caught up to that yet, but give it time._

_We do not have time, we have 3.306 hours!_

_We don’t care about Kirk’s transfer, even if Spock does._ The denial that rippled through from Ghost when he said that was strong enough to make him sick, and he whirled on his mind-partner, projecting factual certainty as he tried to calm them both. _Kirk is dead._

_JIM IS NOT DEAD._ Ghost raged inside him, rising to the fore of themself in a sick tide of angry denial and determination. _The prime law subject is safe! I kept him safe, I saved him. It can be repaired! Progress was going so well, they cannot impede it!_

_Kirk has been lying in the medical bay for six point three eight months without improvement._ He hissed, breath whooshing out between bared teeth and knocking Spock’s hair into chaos. _You think we would live this half-life of uselessness if he was not? You think we would be treated as a grave, the dragon bay as our mausoleum, our body as worthless if he still walked in the saucer above us?_

_He is not dead!_ Ghost splayed their wings and crest. _I have not failed yet and they cannot take him from me!_

D'rachanya moved, wrapping around the kan-sailau protectively, perhaps seeking comfort. “Bath'paik.” Spock swore and stepped away from the computer terminal, out from the shadow of their spread wings. “Let me work.”

_You’re stopping Spock from helping your precious Kirk._ He spat.

Ghost send back a mental shriek of frustration, heaving their body away from the Vulcan and into the open centre of the room. _I can fix this. They will not let me fix this, recovery isn’t complete!_

_You can’t fix whatever’s left of Kirk’s shell,_ he said ruthlessly. _Let the medics on that ship come and take him._

_No! The connections are not complete, without the link I cannot keep him running!_ Ghost dug their claws into the floor. _They will break our link. They will take the body and as their ship draws away the link will fray and fade with lightyears of distance until it snaps apart and they will do this because they think – they all think – that I hurt Jim when prime law I cannot._

_That link was shut down a long time ago,_ he snapped, trying to stomp down on the fluid and inescapable fear coming from Ghost. _First thing they did._

Ghost didn’t reply.

_There is no more neural link between us and that empty shell._ He pushed the message.

In amongst his own flaring anxiety and flashing thoughts, Ghost’s silence was conspicuous.

_No more link!_ He snapped. _The medical staff sent dissolution commands to the nano-robotics. There is no more neural network inside the shell’s skull. No. More. Link._

Very quietly, almost blending in with the background dance of silver fear, Ghost whispered into their headspace. _Lied._

He could sense the stormy panic in Ghost, not calmed by any of their conversation but inflamed and sore like an infected wound. He could see the roiling, bouncing thoughts, scenarios, predictions, branching and wavering options as his partner tried to plan with mounting desperation a way to keep Kirk’s shell within grasp. He could see those things, but like spilt chaos he couldn’t make sense of it, because what Ghost was saying and thinking and building the very foundations of his thoughts on was wrong. _You cannot lie. We cannot lie. We are programming._

He could felt Ghost wavering between talking and staying quiet, between give him a small fraction of his intelligence to converse with or spending it all in the frantic pursuit of misguided planning. _I lied. I cannot but I did._ And then underneath that, pulses of honest terror. _Recovery incomplete. What do I do?_

He gave up, tuning out Ghost’s thoughts to try and escape the emotions flooding along with them and lifting their head to check back in with what the other flighty, panicking being in the room was doing. Spock’s piles of files had gotten larger, the rejected one dwarfing those he was apparently prepared to accept. He’d run out of results from the database search and it sat abandoned and empty in the corner of the screen. Instead the files that had passed his inspection were blown up to full length for closer perusal. D'rachanya bent tightly around the comfort object he protected.

_Recovery partial. Partial consciousness? Attempt initiation._ Ghost muttered, and the world lurched in on itself.

He gagged, swallowing back the panic and fear that was almost a tangible illness, shut their eyes and let their face rest against the floor as something beeped shrilly.

_Initiation failed. Retry._

The horror in their throat choked him, solid and heavy in his lungs. He gagged again, the plates in his neck rippling to bring up sick from a non-existent stomach, and spread their weight down onto the floor pitifully. _Ghost stop, please._

D'rachanya unwound his head to stare at them. So did his pilot. Spock’s hands worried at his sleeves again, his pile of accepted medical reports even smaller than when they’d last checked it. Reaching into his pocket, Spock gripped his beeping communicator.

_Initiation failed. Retry._

_No-_ Nausea washed through him, his wing sails itching as he miserably waited through the drowning, choking pain in his throat. _No Ghost, stop, whatever it is!_

Spock’s communicator lit up with information and an alert. The Vulcan shuddered into motion, pacing forward on an uneven gait, knuckles white around his communicator. When he drew level with their head they had to look up to see him. “Do that again.”

_Retry._ Ghost said grimly.

Sensors in his throat showed him nothing as he choked on air, hacking great gasps out, because he was drowning, sinking in a heavy world with pressure in his lungs. He pawed the ground, sunk his claws in, ripped as he spasmed and it was all distant from the sick, rising, instinctive gagging trying to force the obstruction out of him, no room in the contractions for breathing or thought.

_Initiation failed._ And in between one gasp and the next, he could breathe again.

Mute and lost, he looked for Spock.

The organic had wisely stepped away from them. As Spock traced the new tears in the floor with his eyes, the communicator still in his palm beeped a shrill alert. They watched Spock breathe, perfectly still and quiet, for 3.24 seconds before he sprung into rapid, jerky action. “Do that again.”

He didn’t want Ghost to, he _really_ didn’t. Dragging their neck off the floor he bumped them clumsily into Spock, searching for the beeping device that was trying to report something.

Spock backed away out of range, clasping his communicator carefully. “An alert from the monitoring systems assigned to Kirk’s body. Do it again.”

He shook their head, safe in the nice, sterile dragon bay. Of course he didn’t want to feel that again, even as Ghost rose up, eager and willing.

“Show it was intentional.” Eyebrows drawn frighteningly low and voice cracked through with tension, Spock ordered them anxiously. “Show that you are the source of the variations, prove me wrong. Do it again!”

_Retry initiation._

There was something inside him, blocking every gasping breath, immovable despite his rippling, painful throat and the hacking coughs in his lungs. It pushed and weighed and choked, incompressible and terrifying as he tried to force it out of himself.

_Initiation failed._ Ghost pulsed around him.

He let their body go lax. Spock’s communicator beeped. With the plates in his throat jammed together in odd, sore positions and his claws embedded weakly into the floor, he lay still and tried to be thankful for the reprieve.

“Stay there.” Spock barked, fingertips shaking on his communicator screen. “Stay there, keep doing that. You must keep doing that.”

Resolved hardened in Ghost’s core, like a second confirmation, as though Spock was backing up something already assumed and decided on.

_Please don’t._ He asked quietly, watching Spock run out the door.

_You do not understand. They will break the link. Retry initiation._

And he choked again. His chest banded up tight in strips of tension, constricting him as he fought for breath. Caged, he hacked up air where he should have been coughing up weight. He couldn’t see it or sense it but he knew it was there, filling every passage and gap in him that should never have been filled. He gagged, pushed weight out of him, only for it to rush back in with his next desperate gasp.

_Initiation failed. Retry._

It went on, a millisecond of peace and lack of pain before Ghost triggered it all again, bleeding silver sorrow through their mental landscape as he drowned. Their head fell clanging to the ground, their body heaving as it tried to remove what had never been there, dense liquid tangling in his lungs and stomach and gut as he gagged on it all. Hot stinging bile rose up, forced out, stinging teeth and tongue without ridding him of the choking weight. The world tasted of acid and nothingness on his tongue. He tried to rear back, stopped by Ghost’s will with just as much impact as slamming into a physical wall, falling backing to twitch pathetically on the ground as his throat seized and burned, endlessly aware of not losing consciousness. He pawed and cried in their head, pushing at Ghost, shoving and scratching at his mind partner, choking pressure mixing horribly with waves of panic and desperation in their shared mind.

_Initiation failed. Retry._

He didn’t have the words to protest, already washed deep into the next pulse of nausea, his lungs expanding and pumping at the painful dead weight inside, his chest spasming in pain as the muscles twitched back into action. Bringing up bile and liquid, he raked their claws through the floor and shrieked. Heavy liquid coiled in him with the stinging pain of the acid in his throat. His eyelids swung shut, plunging his into darkness and the instinctual, unstoppable gagging that he had no hope of controlling, as something clunked in the space around him and his lungs tried to cough themselves out of his mouth.

_Initiation failed. Retry._

He tasted blood, dilute and rusty in his choking, his lungs and heart too full and cracking. Straining up, he arched their body and choked, nothing doing anything to stop the heavy pressure and the reflex driving his muscles in gagging pain. All the tissue in his throat was raw, sparking with throbbing hurt. Something brushed his face and he flinched their body away from the new invisible touch. It followed him and clung as though he hadn’t moved at all, murmuring. The liquid in him wouldn’t move but his chest felt like it was being squeezed out of him, contracting to nothing with every hacking cough and expanding to shove painfully at his ribcage with every inhale.

Their mind whirled in a storm, where Ghost was silver and sorrow and sympathy, where he was flashes of impossible to ignore pain and the terror of helplessness. And just as he would do anything, rip though anyone who tried to prolong the choking distress and pressure, under Ghost’s sorrow was multifaceted veins of resolution and willpower, leaving them locked in unequal combat where his every thought was distracted and interrupted by gagging contractions and Ghost was left free to throw them ever further into chaos and pain and unreal sensations.

Nothing in Ghost’s willpower dominating over his was fair or equal or winnable, but in bleeding him out Ghost bled them both, absorbing the rattling hacking cough in his chest as he threw his pain towards his mind partner. Their consciousness saturated with it, beyond ability to cope or think, spilling into every synapse until he pulled himself from their body, wrapping his focus around the border of himself in a vain attempt at protection. A murmur helped him, a sliver of attention and the comfort not of any sort of cure or lessening of pounding chaos, but reassurance of another presence braving the pain in him. He clung to the tiny portion of the vast whole, freezing himself in rigid grip as Ghost’s power raged on. Blood and acid mixed in his seizing throat, tacky and corrosive, burning through flesh.

He sobbed. It mixed with a gag and a cough into one endless contraction, and he sought refuge but with his eyes screwed shut it still didn’t give him complete darkness. The thick liquid of bile, blood and gel he’d managed to force out flooded back in as the need to breathe shattered the weak knowledge that he shouldn’t, and he drowned anew. The murmur in his mind curled in him, striking out deeply into the pain and pressing, prodding, rearranging. He felt its attention slip from him, tried to grab at it or Ghost only for both to slip insubstantial from him, letting him drown alone.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update! I've finally finished my exams, so this is a sort of self-congratulation, I guess. On another note - I need someone to help me with this story, for reasons I'll explain in the note after this chapter.

Awareness returned to him, systems booting up, consciousness trying to piece itself back together. There were holes in him. He didn’t know what would fill them, how they’d work, except he did, throwing away the flimsy things he’d tried to wall himself out with, holding his breath before the sucking plunge of drowning could start again. He searched, blindly, panicking, reaching out for his partner in ways he didn’t understand.

_Ghost where are you_.

_GHOST._

_GHOST!_

The instinct to breathe bore down on him, ruthless and cruel, and he pushed, scrabbling, hands hitting something, scrapping his knuckles against it until that _hurt_ too and he shoved, suddenly viciously, stupidly angry, jerking his knees up, pushing, until something cracked. Homing towards weakness he thrashed in the confining, airless space he’d been trapped, eyes opening to blackness, hands lurching in the vicious, slippery wetness that surrounded him and forced itself down his throat as he helplessly tried to breathe and gagged again, abused throat taking on more pain as it burned with bile and stomach acids, hands and feet shoving and kicking until another dull crack ricocheted through the black, enclosing trap he was in and the surface in front of him gave, broke, fell out from in front of him.

The liquid around him gushed out, spilling him with it, out into bright white light and cold air, his face knocking hard again the floor and blooming with pain. He spasmed, coughing and gagging, lost in cramping contraction and pain as his throat forced out the slimy, gel like liquid and chunks of his stomach, his diaphragm clenching with pain. The great hacking, choking coughs took his whole mind with them, bundled it all into wracking muscle pains and dribbling spit, liquid gunk spooling from his lips stained with blood and sour bile, sticking messily to his limp face when it jerked with the movement of one of the contractions, smearing his eye into it. He didn’t know how long it took to stop. Too long.

It did stop, though.

Just lying on his side in a puddle of his own fluids was almost blissful, but for the pain in his throat and mouth and lungs and chest, the stain of his shoulders, the dizzying cold of the air. But he wasn’t actively choking, drowning in a mess of his own fluids and whatever they’d pumped into his prison instead of air. The eye that wasn’t in a pool of blood, mucus, and slime opened, adjusting to the harsh light of the room. It was empty, fortunately, of other people. Stark and white, it had at least three doors coming off it, cameras probably peering out from the black button holes above them.

The cameras probably weren’t being actively monitored. But it was better to behave as though they were. He hauled himself to sit upright, listening to the protests of his body. The upright, vaguely coffin-shaped container with the blinking (probably alarmed) lights and the breakable front he’d fought out from looked like a long term containment option. Who knew how long they’d had him. Who knew where Ghost was. The holes in his mind, like cavernous pits he was a step away from falling into, said nothing about where his partner was, just sitting there and fraying at the edges as he tried to think around them.

There were priorities. The first – find safety. The second – find Ghost. The third – get back to their body. Out of the hurting, tender thing he was in right then.

Priorities. He stood, testing his balance. Whatever pod he’d been kept in, it had stopped the degeneration of the body. Inside of weak it felt strong, the tremors of vomiting, hacking coughs already fading. Balance was different without a tail. He rolled the fingers of it into a fist. The door he exited was chosen at random, and poorly.

The technician on the other side screeched and he cut off the sound, moving fast, grabbing her neck and twisting it into a headlock, pressuring it, choking her as he’d had to suffer. “ Kllhe.” He hissed, waiting until her head lolled limply and then waiting some more, because such things could be faked. He dropped her limp body. No time to hide it. She carried a security badge on her. It could open doors, but it could also be tracked. He eyes slid over to the grate covering near the bottom of the wall. Any starship had a ventilation system big enough to craw though – necessary for maintenance out in space. The technician had no tools.

He crouched near the grate. Two slight changes in the colours of the metal near the two most lateral slits in in it – he pulled. The grate slid seamless off out from the wall. All federation ships had the feature, easy on, easy off, perfect for resisting intruders boarding a starship who weren’t as familiar with it as you were. He recognised the ship specific variety. There wasn’t any time to question it. He slid himself into the vent system, just high and wide enough for him to freely crawl through, and tugged the grate into place behind him. It clicked back on, the only thing to give away his entrance a smear of the fluid still sticking to his skin. He crawled forward, into darkness lit by sporadic sensors, but blessedly, perfectly, without a camera network. Just in time. His hearing, dulled and fuzzy, picked up the sound of a door opening, beyond the little corridor where the technician lay, in the room with the pod. He froze.

“W- Jim! JIM! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!” Something shattered, something beeped. “McCoy to bridge, McCoy to bridge, FUCKING PICK UP-“

“Doctor-“

“Leonard McCoy, override three four sixe delta zero beta nine, alert security, arrest Spock, get to that dragon bay, NOW!”

“Doctor-“

“He has Jim! Fuck him, the hobgoblin has Jim, I told you Chris, I told you! Jim’s gone from the stasis pod, he-“ The nearer door slid open, Bones’ voice suddenly clearer, “-fuck! Crew member down!”

“We’ll find him. Pike out.”

“Crap!” Whoever was with Bones helped him, took the other half of the technician’s weight. “We’re close enough to not need a stretcher, we can carry her. Sickbay.”

They moved off. He was still on the Enterprise.

Ghost.

_Ghost?_ He tried again, reaching. It only made his head throb, heart beating unevenly.

New priority: get to the dragon bay.

He was near sickbay. He crawled forward, directionlessly, until he found a larger turboshaft, lit and labelled. Shaft 4. He orientated himself around it, decided he was headed in the right direction, hopped out of cramped vents and into the longer passageways that turbolifts ran in, both horizontally and vertically in a huge, interconnected network.

Perfect. He tested his stride and took off, feet slapping against the metal floor. It was minutes, possibly, before blinking lights warned of an incoming lift using the route he was on. He scrabbled inelegantly into a side passage, a vent, hauling himself deep enough that the machinery registered no obstacle, no reason to slow the lift or alarm its occupants. It passed him by. He ducked out of the vent again, prioritising speed, the freedom of movement, nothing close to the sickening pod, and kept running.

A side passage. He took it, slowed to a walk to duck underneath the hanging looped cables, hear the murmur of conversation carried through the wall, where the passage probably passed between cabins or laboratories or corridors. The ground felt familiar. Already trodden. When the small thin passage opened back onto another main turboshaft he turned left, trusting slightly foggy knowledge. A light blinked. He whirled, looking for a vent, pushed off and back towards the side passage.

This time, safety was too far away. The turbolift screeched a warning, jerked to a halt meters away from him, and he could hear the crashes inside as its occupants fell over. Bad. Noticeable. They would not ignore it. He ran, away from where the turbolift blocked his path. Wrong direction.

The turboshaft opened into a vertical one. He stopped on the edge, and looked down. Right direction. A turbolift sat at the right floor, even, though it wouldn’t be as close as if he’d followed his originally planned path. He jumped. A moment later, he remembered that this body couldn’t dictate what it wanted gravity to do.

He hit the top of the parked turbolift hard, rolling with the impact. Far above him on the edges of his hearing, he thought he could hear voices intruding into the turboshafts. He got to his feet - nothing broken, though that felt surprising. The top of the turbolift was removable in much the same way the vent coverings were, each Federation starship with its own unique way to easily unlock it. This was the Enterprise. Therefore he knew how to unlock it. He depressed the little unpowered switches, clicking it off, and tossed it aside, dropping into the lift. The engineer in it screamed, blue skin rippling purple with alarm as they darted away, dropping their papers. Not subtle. In the reflection of the shiny lift glass, half his face was still smeared with blood and snot and slime, the same half of his body dripping unevenly with the mixture. He wiped at it absently, before jolting back to reality. Not the time.

He left the lift running. His feet had left their slime coating rubbed on the floor in previous footsteps, now dry and gripping steadily, sure and balanced as he rounded a corner and kneed a Security member in the gut, dropping him and bouncing off the wall to grab at his partner and pull, dislocating her arm with a tiny amount of effect, too tiny, and throwing her so that she crumpled against the wall. He took her phaser, set on stun, and triggered it next to the forehead of the first red shirt.

Both of them could not pursue. He took off again as she yelled, still awake, alerting others to where he was, as though they were not already on his scent, following down the turbo shaft. He checked around another corner and fired, felling the red shirt who on further inspection was actually an engineer. He left them lying there. There was no one in the next corridor, or the next and he picked up speed, feet thudding, heart pounding, swerving unevenly around the next corner and fixing his eyes on the door to the dragon bay, only meters away, unlocked-

“JIM!” Joyful, echoing. Directly behind him.

He turned. Captain Pike was there, gaping at him, half the Security department around him and equally stunned. Their cohort was big enough to fill and then need multiple lines in the main, bigger hallway, ten meters away.

Arm straight, he raised the phaser.

Captain Pike twitched, jaw slack. “Jim?”

Footsteps, running, coming closer, from the corridor he’d just come from. He glared, and moved, before Pike or his people recovered. Too many to shoot. Speed was better. He pushed off and ran for the door, too fast for the sensor to open it before he got there, pushing at the sides, scrabbling until it retracted and he was through, running into vast open air, lungs heaving and his eyes finally, desperately, hit where Ghost lay among the huge tears in the floor.

“Captain Kirk?!” Spock was there, somewhere. He didn’t have enough attention left to find him.

Ghost’s eyes opened, meeting his, body rising up from the floor as Captain Pike reached the door behind him, metal legs pushing off to meet him as he stumbled, falling, to be caught by a huge metal neck, by scales rippling with sensors that were opening and shutting, that moved with him as his feet kept running, further from the organics clustering by the door, invading his space.

“It’s got Kirk!”

“Shoot it!”

He tried to roar, to screech cracking metal, but this body didn’t do it. He snarled instead, just for a moment before his acid burned throat sized up and choked him, made him cough, spluttering as he rubbed blood across Ghost’s neck where he leant against it.

The second group of pursuers he’d heard arrived, crowding the first, pushing them out further into the dragon bay, no doubt, as the first began to yell about Kirk. Ghost’s head and frills obscured them. The shouting rose, the yelling reaching a fever pitch, until the sound of a phaser going off jolted him, his own up and ready if only Ghost wasn’t in the way-

“QUIET!” Pike shouted. “NO SHOOTING.”

Someone interrupted Pike, backtalk, refuted him.

He didn’t care. Priorities. His head resting on scales, he pleaded. “ Sanoi. Nash-veh fai-tor’fam ran nash-veh riyeht-tor. Sanoi sarlah pla-tor.”

“Kirk’s in there! You want to risk hurting him?!”

Ghost’s scales rippled under him. “ Nash-veh fai-tor’fam. Nash-veh dungi tevan-tor-fam du. Wilat du?”

“Who cares about the fucking dragon, I thought we’d covered this!” Bones’ voice, over pressured and apocalyptic. “He isn’t in there, that shit stain of a Vulcan has him, goddamn _go get him_!”

“I do not have Kirk.” Spock’s voice carried from across the room.

Pike talked over Spock. “Leonard, Kirk is-“

Ghost moved, neck twisted out from under him so he had to support his own weight, wing coming up, tail curling, exposing him. He turned with it, ignoring the sound of Kirk’s name ringing out anguished and desperate. His bloodied and slimed hand reached to rest on Ghost’s lip as Ghost bent himself to press their foreheads together, disparate and mismatched.

And finally he felt silver in his mind. He clung to it, rushed to it, flung himself heedlessly down the path until _Link established_ and _right_ and _safe_ , rearing their head back as the human body collapsed on the floor, its strings and consciousness cut. Their thoughts bled together, running with the speed organics couldn’t.

_Running checks. Organic form damaged._

_Hurt._ He agreed. _I was stuck. They shut me up, locked me down, forced things down my throat and it hurt Ghost, it hurt so much, why didn’t you stop it?_

_You were going to be taken away. Spock said it needed to happen._ Ghost was pained, Ghost regretted too, Ghost had felt empty and lost without him. _We were not ready._

“JIM!” Bones burst towards them, stumbling, tears spilling.

_He will take the body away again._ Ghost hissed urgently, flashing with anger and the pressure of the threat.

It reflected off his own, making a multifaceted, shimmer thing of crystallised rage, of being hurt and locked up and having the body stolen from them, of the pain of separation and the betrayal of the chase, that they would ever hunt him through his own ship, shoot at them, hate them, blame them. He slammed their forelimbs down, cutting off the line of sight to the body, hiding it behind his wings, and threw their head back, teeth flashing, finally back in a body with agency and power. They roared, the metal in their throat shrieking and cracking and rumbling, the sound of thunder and threat and rage. It sent vibrations through the ship, the walls and floor and cage of the dragon bay, made the organics cry out, Bones stop and look at him with horror, with disgust and fear.

He would be fearsome, if that was all anyone ever expected of him. Teeth bared, sound still roiling out from them, he watched Bones scrabble backwards, the phasers in the ranks behind him drawing up, Pike yelling something that couldn’t be heard under his shriek. Their tiny guns with their minuscule charges would do nothing against him and Ghost, their shouting and aggression and hatred nothing but cruelty. He would not hurt them, but – and Ghost agreed with the thought, his willpower coursing through it too – he wanted them gone.

He snapped their wings back and out, rearing up, body held against gravity above the organic form beneath it, and threw their head back, fins spread wide. They fired dilute fuel, spilling hot light, brilliant flames from their mouth, blackening and cracking the surface tens of meters above aggressive organics heads, tiny bolts of true, flickering pink plasma coalescing through it, deadly, threatening _fire_. For they were more powerful than the people that threatened them, they were strong, they wouldn’t not be hurt or stolen, they would _fight,_ tear the world down around them before he was separated from Ghost again. The organics flinched before them, shying away from the fire their eyes couldn’t see through and the monster they wanted him to be, screaming at each other underneath his roar, gesturing frantically, some trying to shoot, some fleeing from him in a terror that sparked dark satisfaction.

Swirling silver blocked him, took his fire on its skin, rising between them and the organics. He snapped his jaws shut, fire and noise cutting off. D'rachanya and Spock loomed, wings spread defensively, hind legs raised awkwardly to avoid crushing those underneath them. Their snout, lit up with scrolling superficial reports of damage and worry and confusion, cleared to a single word. _STOP._

They bared their teeth at the other dragon uncertainly, already regretting the scorch marks on D'rachanya’s scales.

_Captain Kirk, if you can comprehend this, stop._ Spock displayed to them, him and his partner leaning up in the air, raising themselves to float vertically as the organics underneath them screamed and scurried. _I do not understand what is happening, but you cannot hurt them._

If he’d wanted to hurt them, he’d have aimed at them, not above them. Ghost spun with indignation with him. They were not the aggressors here.

D'rachanya floated closer. They bared their teeth, flared their head fins, and stepped backwards. Ghost scooped the organic body up with one of their wings and dragged it along with them.

_Why have you woken?_ Spock wrote above the hubbub as Pike began to take control of the chaos.

They didn’t know. They didn’t know what was happening. _Rebooting takes time?_ Ghost suggested, theorising randomly. They still had no way to tell Spock that.

D'rachanya and Spock turned, their head swinging down to the herd of organics, their back bristling as sensors opened to keep an eye on Ghost and him. He could still see the words as Spock used his screen to talk to Pike. _Captain Pike._

“Spock?!” Pike yelped, then rapidly brought himself under control, although Ghost still pointed out that his heartbeat was startlingly fast. “Spock, what did you _do_?”

_I do not know_. Spock admitted. _There are more pressing concerns. That was an intimidation attempt._

“A _threat_?! That dragon fired! At us!”

_It was directed near you, not at you, and at the lowest power the firing system can operate at, otherwise the wall behind you would not be there. It was a threat, not an attack._ Spock looked at them steadily. Ghost retracted their teeth. Separate to Ghost, he dropped them down again. _You need to leave._

Pike stood, just for a moment, wavering. It was almost unnatural to see. Then whatever decision he was unsure about was made and resolved, action sparking back into him. “Evacuate the dragon bay. Everyone out!” Most of the organics seemed only too happy to obey him, rushing out or backing away, their eyes on the two dragons. “Dugnoch, M’iphh, take McCoy.”

“What- No!” Bones jerked away, towards him and Ghost. They displayed their teeth. “It has Jim!”

“It IS Jim!” Pike barked, and then looked up at D'rachanya, suddenly uncertain. “…Right?”

_That is currently the most probable possibility._

“Jim would never hurt us!” Bones’ arms were caught by the Security personnel. He immediately tried to tear them away, but they were stronger.

“He pointed a phaser at my forehead.” Pike shut his eyes, briefly. “Let’s go.”

The Security people hauled Bones with them. Pike was the last to leave, turning back, looking at Spock’s body where it was collapsed in D'rachanya’s cell. The door slid shut, through the crowd on the other side lingered. D'rachanya twitched, and Spock’s organic body stuck out a hand, levering itself up from its ungraceful sprawl on the floor. The Vulcan stared at him and Ghost. They retracted their teeth.

The delinked pilot stood up, striding to the nearest computer terminal and waving his hand to summon it up from the floor. He opened up a program and selected it to run. At the press of Spock’s finger, the lights above all the doors to the dragon bay flashed red, locks clicked shut. Spock’s communicator beeped, and he answered it absently, one hand typing commands for the Enterprise’s mainframe. “Yes?”

“Spock, what did you just do?” Pike said, voice coming from both the communicator and the other side of the door.

“Doctor McCoy cannot be trusted to refrain from using his override code, due to emotional bias. I would prefer to minimise volatility, therefore I must request that you stay on the other side of that door.”

Pike’s communicator was snatched from him. “Were you planning this, you bastard! You-“

A scuffle, and Pike’s voice came back on. “Agreed.”

“I am trying to find camera footage of Kirk waking.”

“What?!”

“I do not know why this has happened.”

_Not ready._ Ghost hummed, and he pressed against Ghost’s mind in agreement. _But needed to, had to._

“No- let me through-“ Bones’ voice again. “Look, let me get to Jim’s body. Take it back with your dragon or something; we can still get him on the USS Maui!”

_Had to because THAT._ Ghost growled, and he echoed it, and their throat screeched their displeasure.

“ Bath’pa.” Spock swore.

The USS Maui, which was going to steal the organic body, lock it up again. _Tear us apart_ , Ghost contributed, seething with righteous fury.

_I will never be separated from you again_. He hissed, and their molten anger had a new target.

They spun. Spock pressed something. “This is Commander Spock. Red alert, all hands to battle stations, Captain Pike report to the-“

He and Ghost were already whirling off the ground, leaving the organic body behind in the locked dragonbay, nearly crashing into the large red button and squirming out the gap as soon as it opened, as D'rachanya sprung to life behind him, as his body slipped through the gap and the protective air containing membrane and out, out into clean deep space.

They extended their wings and roared, soundlessly, already catching and pulling speed even as their eyes adjusted to the starkness of black space. He wheeled and streaked them toward the USS Maui, the squat hospital ship lying so close alongside the Enterprise they had to turn them sideways to slip through the gap between ships. He landed, hard, aware that Spock and D'rachanya were seconds behind them, head swinging down to wrinkle his lips and snarl through the main view screen of the bridge of the Maui, his teeth millimetres from the transparent aluminium, nearing scraping it. The organics inside flinched backward, opening their mouths in screams he couldn’t hear. Ghost slapped their forelimbs against the ship’s hull, sending deep vibrations of sound through it, demonstrating how easily it could be ripped open.

D'rachanya barrelled into them form the side, knocking them both along the Maui’s hull. His tail whipped the paint off it, but they caught their balance and flew, circling to watch as D'rachanya and Spock, ill practised and inexperienced, rolled on. With no friction in space to slow them they tumbled off the edge of the Maui’s top deck, eventually pulling themselves to a stop in empty space and slowly turning around. _Do not hurt them_. Spock flashed up on their display warningly. _I will stop you._

They didn’t want to hurt anybody, but they couldn’t let themselves be separated. And if Spock and D'rachanya actually thought they were prepared to face a real opponent, one who knew how to fly and fight, then they were dead wrong. A dragon was fast enough to have arrived seconds before D'rachanya had. The other pair was slow, muddled, unused to flying and untested in every respect. Everyone had forgotten them. They were overlooked, dismissed as brainless and dull, disregarded as the precision weapons they were, and told to wait blindly by as people took what was theirs, to the point where Spock thought him and his inexperienced, young partner were a match for the lead dragon of the Flight.

They wheeled and spun away, grasping onto the particular push and pull of force that propelled dragons and extending it, using it, spinning away from D'rachanya faster than the intermittently online targeting systems of the Enterprise could follow, curving a wingtip until it just brushed the surface of the Enterprise as they passed her, climbing above her. Behind them the blue trailing glow of a dragons speed began to form and flicker. _Remind them what we are._ Ghost murmured, angered and proud. _Remind them what we can do._

No, they would not hurt anybody. But it was time for the world to remember _that they could._ He breathed out and lit up, fuel racing out from them, bursting to life in the brilliant pink and purple of charged, violent plasma, out from his mouth and hitting his wings that tingled, reabsorbing the energy and speeding him even further, past the impulse speed of a starship, encasing him in the shining, nebula like energy of his fire. They twisted to point themself away from the ships, towards empty space and stopped, forced the energy of speed and motion into sudden stillness, into the fire as they tipped their head up and roared with it, lightening and energy pouring from them in in a huge, great arc, a solar flare in heat and energy stained with the molecular colour of the dragon’s fuel, the pinks and purples of an angry sunset erupting in pulsing plasma that dwarfed him, dwarfed both the starships, outpouring heat and light into empty space to die like the mass ejection from a star, immense, destructive, and cathartic.

The fountain of fractal power gleamed, radiating energy that his wings caught and brought back to him, spread wide and victorious. He didn’t need to recycle any of it, his power stores overflowing and brimming after months of inactivity and neglect. But the washing energy was a good feeling. Not dangerous, either, unless one of the starships flew into the gigantic glowing bolt of plasma and energy.

He spun idly to look at them. The Enterprise blinked warningly, phaser banks along her flanks lit up, targeting systems probably locked on now that they were floating motionless. The transparent aluminium windows set into the ship showed him the throbbing red lights inside, the siren that would be wailing with them a distant memory called up from the depths of his mind.  Ghost shifted their gaze to D'rachanya. They were far enough from both the starship and the other dragon to not even need to turn their head, a flick of their eyes focusing in on their faraway flightmate. Backlit by the gleaming aurora scatter of violent, neon colour, he could see the thought processes scrolled down the other dragon’s holographic screen. It was uncomprehending, shocked out of both Spock’s analysis and D'rachanya’s curiosity into simple blank awe.

_Satisfaction_. Ghost curled through him. He echoed the emotion.

Mimicking the catch of gravity at the apex of a climb, when the forces propelling something up equalised and then were overtaken by the pull of a planet, they spun themselves and fell, back towards the Enterprise, their own centre of gravity. They dove gently, comparatively slow, almost daring the locked on targeting systems of the starship to fire. With outstretched wings they pulled up above the saucer, streaming along it, close but not close enough to touch, slipping over the top of it and darting down, past the warp nacelles, looping past the stem of the ship upside down and lazily twisting back though open doors into the dragon bay. Their scales tingled as they passed through the protective membrane, far faster and better than any air lock, and they landed squarely on their legs, wings back up into their normal compact folds.

The organic body hadn’t been disturbed, either Spock’s locks or the red alert keeping intruders off of it. _Relief_. Ghost murmured in him.

He supposed that was right.

D'rachanya hit the ground behind him, scrabbling. Spock and his partner hoisted themselves in front of Ghost, and enlarged the holographic screen even further. _Do not do anything. Do not set fire to anything. Stop._

He snorted, which didn’t exactly produce any noise. They weren’t going to do anything. They didn’t have to – Pike would think twice before trying to dump the organic body on the USS Maui.

_And the Maui would probably be too scared to accept the patient._ Ghost flickered. _And Bones cannot get in to the dragon bay to interfere. This is good._

_Perfect._ He agreed.

They laid themselves down, flopping down on the floor, tail loose and outstretched, forelimbs pillowed under their long neck and head resting so close to the prone organic body that each breath in and out made its blond hair ruffle about. The hair was longer than he thought it should be. No one had cut it for a long time.

D'rachanya and Spock’s attention was effectively drawn back to the organic body, cutting off their upset. D'rachanya twitched and Spock’s Vulcan form sat up from where it was collapsed by the computer terminal, with perhaps a few extra bruises on it. He paced over to where Kirk’s body sprawled. “Spock to bridge.”

“Spock!” Captain Pike was not having a good day. “Report!”

“The ARU is back in the dragon bay. Is the Maui undamaged?”

“They aren’t happy. A hospital ship, it attacked-“

 “It threatened. Again. The ARU- Kirk’s dragon is much faster than my own. He had the time to break into the hull of the Maui, yet they did not. He aimed the plasma burst away from both the Maui and the Enterprise.”

“You think Kirk,” Pike’s voice hitched, “you think he’s in there? That he decided to do that?”

“A dragon cannot fire without being linked to a pilot. We were careful in their design; their mimicry cannot extend to combat abilities. Kirk’s dragon is linked to someone, and when Kirk’s body collapsed, the dragon became aggressive.” Spock knelt down, feeling for a pulse. “I cannot confirm whether it is Kirk. Keep all stations alarmed. I do not know what is causing the aggression.”

“Are you safe?”

“Although aggressive, the dragon has not caused harm to any person. Additionally, I have my own unit with me.” Spock’s hand shifted, feeling around the organic body’s neck. “Kirk’s breathing is stable. His heartrate is accelerated but steady. I cannot discern any telepathic impressions from skin-to-skin contact.”

“Okay, hold up- Sulu, hold position with the Maui and close the dragon bay doors. Spock, your advice? Are we in danger?”

“I suggest overriding the dragon bay doors to keep them shut, and maintaining red alert. The dragon is acting unpredictable.”

“That’s one way to describe it making a _solar flare_ on our doorstep.”

Spock blinked, visibly struggling with human phrasing. “…Yes?”

“Kirk’s status?” Pike questioned.

“I have limited instrumentation with me, but he appears unhurt. I do not know where the blood on him came from. The lack of telepathic presence would suggest a return to a comatose state.” Spock sat back, crouched on the balls of his feet and apparently fine with it, inhumanly balanced.

_That is not good._ Ghost hummed.

_What’s not good?_

_They think Kirk is in a coma. They wanted to transfer him to the USS Maui because he was in a coma. If he has returned to a coma, they will want to transfer him again. That will separate us. It cannot be allowed._

He swung his attention internally, as Spock began talking about relative heart rates, both hands gripping the communicator harder than necessary. _It can’t,_ he hissed in agreement, _we’ll fight them._

_We may not… need to._ Ghost suggested hesitantly.

He send a wordless pulse of questioning back.

_The body is comatose. If it is not comatose, that might be enough for them to send the Maui away, would prove that Spock helps, would make them listen to him._

_True._

_The body was not comatose when you were in it._

Yeah. He’d known where this was going. _It hurt,_ he sighed, but pain was better than separation. And they couldn’t fight the Enterprise, not really, not truly, or they’d kill people in the process. _Fine. How._

_Delink_. Ghost murmured, and showed him the way.

He poured out from one self and into another, the precision of artificial existence wiping out and replacing itself with the diffuse, tired pain of the organic body, eyes shut and breathing deep. He tried to stop himself for reaching for Ghost, like trying not to pick as a scab, or a recent stab wound. It was too hard, and he threw himself out in his mind, running through silver and wrapping himself in it. _Still here, you’re still here._

_Not disconnected this time._ Ghost curled around him, his partner strumming with learnt lessons and past mistakes. _We were not ready._

_We are still not ready._ He corrected.

_Yes._ Ghost murmured sadly.

He opened his eyes and sat up.

“ BATH’PA!” Spock yelped, and dropped his communicator.

He eyed it as Pike’s voice burst from the other end. “SPOCK!”

Spock snatched it up again, eyes darting to it and returning to the organic body, hands trembling. “Kirk is awake. I will speak later.” He shut the communicator off.

He watched Spock come to him, looking so very different up close, seen from human eyes and at a human scale.

Spock’s eyes were wide, wide enough to see all of the warm brown iris, but his hands had stopped shaking. “Captain Kirk. Do you know where you are?”

He damn well knew where he was, but he was no Kirk. “ Du kup-fam kal-tor au nem-tor nash-veh fi-tor shi'has.” He said, throat still sore, voice crackling.

Spock just sort of… stopped, for a moment. “You speak Vulcan.”

“ Sauyaing.” He said, and tried to do the eyebrow thing Spock did sometimes. He failed, though it wasn’t like the organic body had ever been able to do it.

“ Sem-rik.” Spock whispered, and switched back to Standard. “Do you know where you are?”

“ Nash-veh d'rachanya tchol.” He answered him, and then went back to pushing his own agenda. “ Au klotaya dahshaya etek, etek-tor kali-fi au.”

“Us?”

He indicated Ghost with a wave of his hand. Unbalancing himself like that nearly made him topple over again, gravity still an odd concept. He readjusted, folded himself into a cross-legged position.

“You do not give your consent to be treated on the USS Maui.”

He nodded.

Spock nodded back absently. One of his hands began to tremble again.

His throat hurt. The saliva in his mouth eased it when he swallowed, but the bile and stomach acid had left their mark, still weren’t completely washed away. He picked at the half set sludge on one side of his ribcage, the slurry of bodily fluids and the slime he’d been drowned in. The blood in it was congealing, making a horrifyingly interesting sort of mucus out of everything else. It strung stickily between two of his fingers when he stretched them. Even with Ghost with him, supporting him, lifting the weight that he had to push to take each breath in the weak body, he was tired.

_Can I come back?_ He asked.

Ghost wavered. _We can’t be separated. Will they listen to Spock?_

_We will protect the body. Keep it here. Even if they don’t listen, they will not be able to take it from us._

_Alright._

“ Nash-veh i'hal-tor.” He warned Spock.

Spock’s hand clamped around his upper arm, which was more than a little disconcerting for a number of reasons. Vulcans didn’t touch people, but there was also the speed Spock had moved at and the unnerving way that nothing else about his expression changed to warn of the movement. Normally Spock’s lack of expression was peaceful, sort of calm and totally unruffled, but this was ruffled, this was very ruffled. _Have I broken Spock?_

“I am not broken.” Spock interrupted, almost compulsively answering the question.

Ghost vibrated in alarmed amusement.

He, meanwhile, had found a much better solution than talking. _That’s right, you’re a touch telepath. Well, that makes one of us. Hi._

“My name is Commander Spock.”

_I know that._ He huffed, trying to project amusement in Spock’s direction. Difficult to do when he didn’t exactly know where Spock was, mentally speaking. _You should meld with me._

Spock’s grip on his trembled, tightening almost painfully before it went back to steady pressure. “What?”

_My throat hurts. It’d be faster, and I’m tired. I want this over with,_ he admitted.

Ghost send a pulse of reassurance through him.

“I do not…” Spock paused, breathing completely, unnaturally normally. “I do not understand.”

_Neither._ He agreed.

The body didn’t feel tired, the body felt fine. Ready to get up and run, and fight, and move again, despite the lingering irritation in his throat, but he, he was not the body. Mentally, in the skip of his thoughts and the holes he avoided trying to touch, he was drained. He wanted normality. He wanted the slid, unshakable skin of metal, the comfort of strength, the body that had no need to breathe or beat its heart, which was stronger and more reliable than those organic needs.

“I cannot-“ Spock crouched, sleek and confused. “What?”

Maybe he really had broken Spock. He let that thought go. _I’m tired. I want to leave. Just make sure they can’t take this body._

“You are tired. You are distressed.”

_No one can take the body. I won’t let them._

“I do not understand.”

_You could, though._

He let the suggestion fall between them, but didn’t push. Spock didn’t seem to get it.

It was almost absurdly easy to let his attention wander; his eyes slip close. There was so much about the body to take in. Not only its pain and readiness to fight, but also just its existence, the way sensation was constantly pouring in, alike and yet different to what his dragon body felt. He could feel the heart in his chest beating, not within the rib bones, but in the pulse of blood in and out of compressed veins in his crossed legs, the muscles pressed close enough together by the pose that the delicate rush of blood became tactile. He couldn’t hear jack shit, as compared to normal. Organic hearing was not only limited in distance but also dulled down to a ridiculously small range of frequencies. Then there was smell, and taste, two connected and intertwined to fill his mouth with the taste of his own blood and sick, his nose with the smell of it and the dusty emptiness of the dragon bay. It wasn’t him, not the reach or experience of his normal body, Ghost still with him but not adjusting for his mistakes, not partnering with every movement, bits and pieces of the world around him dulled while stupid sensations nagged at him.

That was enough. He slipped free of the organic body, shrugged out of it like discarded clothing after a long day, back into the full and open contact of the dragon body with Ghost, who murmured silver and relieved around him. The transition was so simple now that they were together. He sighed into their mind, stretching into the existence he knew best, mind twining tiredly around the comfort of his partner.

The organic body slumped, Spock squawking in alarm. “Captain Kirk. Kirk!”

He raised their head from the floor, the rest of their body following in one long, sinuous stretch. Padding forward on their forelimbs, Ghost lowered their head on level with the perhaps a little over-worked Vulcan. “Kirk!” Spock shook the body, then flinched with awareness of the giant head now beside him. “…Kirk?”

Kirk was dead.

_Kirk is NOT dead._ Ghost hummed happily, obviously incorrect.

Whatever. He pushed Spock away gently and bent over the organic body, looping out their tongue and wrapping it around the limp sack of muscles and bone. Dragons did not need to sleep, but they were definitely due for some time without thinking. Or having to threaten anyone. Better to keep the body near them, where they could keep an eye on it in case anyone who wasn’t Spock reappeared.

Spock yanked at their head fins. He ignored it.

They took the body back to their cell, toothless mouth and lips wrapped firmly around it. Their prize was put down in space cleared with a flick of their tail, laid out on the metal floor so that it wouldn’t rest on mangled power tools. It was placed near the inner wall, as easy to protect as possible. He laid their bulk down with far less care, straight across the entrance. The sensors on their back flared and Ghost adjust them to pick up intruders, his hearing once against vast and precise enough to pick up on the smallest of organic movements. Before they were even settled Spock was clambering over them, stepping over scales and sensors still adjusting as he stubbornly followed the organic body. They had to give him points for persistence, at least.

Spock dropped down next to the organic body and crouched, movements shaky. “Kirk?” He lifted the limp head, fingers searching for a pulse. “Please.” The body’s pulse was fine, they’d checked. Spock checked it too, and the pulse was still fine, and it did nothing to erase the uncertainty Spock looked at the organic body with, the barely suppressed confusion.

Spock lifted a hand, hesitating, and then slapped the organic body. It was hard enough that the head moved with the blow, making Ghost rumble with unease. “Kirk?” The Vulcan said, almost expectantly.

Whatever he’d been trying to do, it wasn’t working, because Spock shook the body. “You were awake. You were here.”

Both factually correct. He hadn’t gone anywhere, though.

Spock let the body go and crouched, still and stressed, for an unnaturally long pause. When he broke his own motionlessness, it was with one unsteady hand. He reached out, resting it gently, oddly, on the organic body’s face. “My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts.”

_Now he wants to meld_. He muttered at Ghost. But there was still only Ghost in his mind, one voice instead of two. _Can’t feel him._

_Spock’s telepathy is organic._ He could feel Ghost stretching, trying to find a new connection to talk to. _We are not._

_Not right now._ He pointed out, eyeing the organic body fatalistically.

_We communicated that we would not allow the organic body to be taken from us. Spock will pass the message on, even if the meld fails._ In Ghost’s thoughts there was an undercurrent of concern. But there was also the knowledge that their wants, their needs had never factored into what people did with them before. They were assuming that the organic body would be listened to more, but they didn't know that for sure.  _You don’t need to if you don’t want to._

_I don’t want to,_ he agreed, _but Spock is…_ unbalanced? Confused? Possibly even upset, as strange as it was to attach that emotion to someone so calm. _He would be reassured._ He would know their choice.

_It will not cause damage._

He found the process that led to the organic body, and with Ghost following him, backing him up, he flowed through it. He hit the organic body, jolting with the expectation of skin and bones, the prediction of pained uncertainty.

It didn’t happen.

In the darkness of a safe mind, he _bloomed_.

His awareness stretched itself, bounding up and outward toward infinity, in a place without colour but still with the impressions of it, the space in him safe with the deep purple of night after the suns had dropped in the desert, the clear distortion of a cupped hand of water in the heat. It rang with shock, with confusion and jarring flickers of green, but underneath that it was safe, gentle with his own confusion, making space for him without thought or hesitation, not pressing down on him. He tried to turn, to look around, but there was no body to respond to his instructions, nothing to physically look _at_ or _with_ in the limitless absence around him.

The colour’s confusion was peaking, flashing the green of fresh blood with alarm, the deep blue of interest rising behind it as weak pink fear was ruthlessly wiped from existence. _Kirk._

_Ghost?_

_Not me._  His silver mind partner rose in him, filling in the blank places he couldn’t think around, buoying him up inside. _It might be Spock. Spock tried to meld with you._

_This is a meld?_

_Captain Kirk._ Spock’s voice reverberated oddly, a quieter echo happening before the projected thought, an inner thought and then the louder, clearer deliberate projection. _Is this you?_

_Kirk is dead._ He replied, automatically.

_Kirk isn’t dead_. Ghost rumbled indignantly.

Spock’s colours wavered and died, a natural falling enhanced with an immovable will, until the surface of his mind where they touched was blank and beige. _What are you and why have you possessed his body?_ The power behind the thought was stunning, threatened to crush him and Ghost if they twitched they wrong way under its gaze.

_It’s ours, you can’t have it._ Ghost hissed.

_It’s ours._ He agreed, though weakly. He didn’t actually want to be in it, it hurt, it was uncomfortable and weak and easily bruised, but it was theirs.

_If you do not want to be in it,_ Spock vibrated, apparently able to see his colours as he could see Spock’s, _then why did you commit the transgression of possessing it?_

_It OURS._ He repeated, Ghost swelling in him, a silver wave to back him up.

But they could understand why Spock was confused. They were confused. Everything was confusing, and they tried to project that, a solid lump of emotion instead of coherent thought.

_You said they were going to take it._ He said miserably. _You said they were going to separate us. They cannot have the body, we will not let them._

Spock’s consciousness shifted, considering. Blended into but not fully suppressed by the artificial beige calm, blue interest reared. _I explained that to the dragon._

If he could just explain, Spock might understand, might leave them to sleep. _Thank fuck you don’t call them ARUs anymore._ He thought tiredly. _You explained so Ghost tried – we weren’t ready. We aren’t ready. They cannot have the body._

Under the beige, a brighter colour, the swirling fabric of confusion when the dragon had begun convulsing on the floor in time to signals from Kirk, a hypothesis given more evidence; that the two were linked, casual and not just correlation.

_I couldn’t breathe._ He tried to explain. _They were drowning me. They were taking me. We can’t be separated._

Spock stayed silent, the colours in him blending back into beige as he considered something.

Frustrated, he lashed out; calling for his partner in a splash of the silver Ghost appeared as to him. Spock’s carefully-coloured consciousness was precise and elegant and stopped blind just short of touching him, of depth and understanding, and he’d tried, he’d made an honest effort to talk through fractured holes in him and piercing confusion. _I’m done. I’m done. Ghost-_

_I am here._ Ghost soothed, an answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet. _I am with you._

_I want out_ , he admitted.

Spock’s beige attention flickered green along its edges with alarm, but those were no longer the colours he was paying attention to. A silver more deep and three-dimensional than his imitation of it stretched down to him, met with him and surged within him, bearing him away to cool safety. His connection to Spock jolted with the other’s shock and then evaporated, as insubstantial as mist. Ghost wrapped gratitude around them, their mutual relief pulsing between them as he sighed, lifted out one wing to stretch it over the two organic bodies, and turned inwards, his mind begging for rest.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I, in my infinite wisdom, have made life harder for myself. You might have noticed that Kirk's not exactly speaking Standard anymore (there are proper plot-related reasons for this) and that, frankly, is going to make it difficult for me to update, because of the need to translate what Kirk's saying into Vulcan. Would anyone be willing to help out? I don't need a proper translation, just a transliteration using the Vulcan language dictionary. Any help would be really appreciated!   
> On another note, what do you all think? Got any idea what's happening? Completely lost? Want to yell at me? (please yell at me)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, updating more than once a month. What is the world coming to? 
> 
> Hover over the weird looking text to see what people are saying in Vulcan! Or Orion! Or Andorian! We're really going for broke on non-human languages here.

_Spock is poking us._

His mind wiped clean, still plunged into deeply deliberate blankness as he rested, he flicked Ghost the minimum amount of attention to reply. _Sensors don’t sense it._

_Organic body._

Did they really have to care? If it was in any way optional, he leant heavily towards the option of more rest.

_Spock is scanning the body._

This was going to be a _thing_ , he could just tell. The sort of _thing_ he’d need to wake up for.

Ghost raised their head, reading over Spock’s shoulder. _The tricorder readings say that the body’s glycogen stores are low. Risk of blood sugar dropping._

_Damnit._ He grumbled.

_If the blood sugar drops to hypoglycaemic levels then the body will need medical intervention._ Ghost reasoned. _It may be taken away._

_Ugh fuck them. Fuck this_ . He stirred himself, his consciousness booting back up from inactivity. _They definitely aren’t getting that body._

_No_. Ghost agreed, the thought echoing with the distant bedrock of possessive protection he felt toward the body.

_We are definitely going to intervene._ He concluded gloomily.

_Pretty much._

_Ugh._

_Sorry._ Ghost whispered, and threw open the way to the body.

Grouchily, he let himself be sucked in.

He hit organic existence with a deep gasp, back arching from the floor as he stared upwards, the light blinding slow to react pupils.

“ Tra-se ozhikaing rai.” Spock swore, and from the clanging sound he’d just stumbled into Ghost.

Ghost confirmed it with a sort of rueful humour. _Spock’s a little wound up._

_No kidding._ He let himself clutch onto the silver voice in his head, the relief of still having a mind partner as immediate and crucial as drawing his next breath.

His eyes adjusted, and he sat up. Looking down at his lap, the body was still covered in various fluids from itself. Someone had dressed it, but not modestly – all he wore was an almost swimsuit-like thing covering his junk. The stomach bile probably wasn’t doing the swimsuit any favours. The body’s throat still hurt. He looked around for Spock, who, with the tricorder still pointed at the body and the rest of him shying away in a shocked pile on the junction where Ghost’s neck met the shoulders of the draconic body, was actually doing a decent impression of someone trying to ward off a vampire with a cross. Not exactly the most dignified he’d ever seen the Vulcan look. To be fair, his impression of someone who’d thrown up on themselves, swum around in it, thrown up some more and then let it all dry on them couldn’t have been very elegant either. Though his wasn’t an impression. He tried for a smile.

“ Surak ni'droi'ik nar-tor nash-veh din-tor.” Spock hissed.

Either smiling made him look insane, or an emotional reassurance wasn’t going to work on Spock. Probably both.

The body was sticky where it wasn’t tacky, still aching slightly, and he didn’t have any great desire to actually be in it. _Ghost, it needs sugar?_

_Food, and water. Fuel._ Ghost backtracked a second later. _Miscalculation – the digestive system is not functional. Cannot have food._

_But blood sugar?_

_Needs replenishing,_ Ghost agreed, _but not by food._

He nodded, which made his sense of balance go wobbly for a moment before internal systems adjusted themselves. “ Nash-masu bolau. Nash-haseret khaf-slor-tukh.”

Spock stared at him. He stared back. The eyes began to water, and blinked in reflex.

“ Du Vuhlkansu stariben?”

“ Nash-masu bolau.” He repeated patiently. “ Nash-”

“  Nash-veh i’prah.” Spock jerked, the tricorder falling to the ground. “ Fam-tor-” His eyes flickered, looking at the organic body, studying different pieces of it. “ Du bol-hafau-kum'i.”

He nodded.

_Difficult to consume water while unconscious._ Ghost murmured.

_The water will make the throat feel better._ He agreed.

Spock scrambled backwards over Ghost, maintaining eye contact for as long as possible. The dull organic ears caught the rapid tap of his boots on the dragon bay floor, edging into a run, and then a hiss as a door opened. With Spock gone, he flopped backwards. He did not foresee that landing that way would hurt the head. _…Ow._

_Please do not damage it._ Ghost huffed, longsuffering.

_I don’t actually want to, thanks_ . He said. _Are you keeping track of Spock?_

_Yes._ Ghost hummed, shifting uneasily. _There are… many people, outside the dragon bay. In the corridors. Spock has told some of them to get water and medicine. He is keeping others out of the bay._ Their massive silver tail thumped the ground in irritation.

_Roar at them._

_They are not inside yet,_ Ghost said, but visibly stored the idea away for future reference. _The crew with the water has returned. The crew with the medicine is arguing to be let inside._ A couple of seconds later, _the crew with the medicine has given in._

He heard the door slid open again. More importantly, it also slid shut. Spock’s feet sounded unevenly on the floor as he came back, clambering over Ghost and twisting his head awkwardly to look at the organic body. He stared back at Spock from the floor. Spock stared back. He sat up, and held out his hand. “ Nash-masu bolau.”

Mutely, Spock handed it over.

Unscrewing the cap, he tilted his head back and drank, uncaring of the overflow that spilt out of his mouth and added to the mess on his everything. The cool, tasteless liquid started off tainted with the taste of acid bile and blood it was washing away, but he worked through that, swallowing until that only thing he could feel or taste was the healing sting of washed out relief in his throat, until the water sat heavily in his stomach. He eyed the empty bottle. He might have even needed more water. He was a little unsure. The body was not thirsty, exactly, but the water was good for the throat.

“Captain Kirk.”

He flinched, and jerked himself to look at Spock.

Spock approached carefully, his arms filled with what couldn’t only be blood sugar medication. Most likely it was just the most medical gear that the blue shirts had been able to shove on him in the time they’d had. “Captain Kirk?”

“ Tevik.” He reminded gently. Then he reached his hands out, because the body was still slowly burning through its energy reserves. “ Nash-haseret khaf-slor-tukh.”

_He isn’t dead._ Ghost grumbled at him.

_He is,_ he reminded placidly, _he died._

_He’s not dead, you idiot._

Spock dropped the stuff in his arms. He was all about the dropping today, apparently. “Kirk is dead?”

_Don’t make Spock’s day any harder, today’s been tough for him._

_It’s been terrible all round._ He agreed without making any promises. No one could run from the truth, after all, no matter how much they’d like to believe otherwise. Spock dropping all his shit worked out well enough for him; in the pile on the floor he could see a clear bag of IV fluid. Perfect. _Don’t freak out when I stick a needle in this._

_I know what an IV is._ Ghost growled at him.

_Look, I’m sorry Kirk’s dead, but he is._ He shrugged, and was almost derailed form his train of thought by the feeling of the gesture. He picked up the IV bag and its little section of attached tubing, needle on the end. _You just need to accept it. I’m sorry, but it’s true._ He squirted out a little bit of the fluid in the needle, making sure there were no air bubbles in the stuff.

_What makes you think that!_ Ghost yelped and then yelped again when he inserted the needle into his arm, letting the nutritionally balanced selection of glucose, vitamins, and minerals start seeping into their organic blood.

Spock’s hand clamped down on their shoulder, like he was trying to steady the body. It was appreciated. The point of contact between Vulcan and human skin was cold, Spock’s desert body doing its best to steal heat. “ Guntarli nafai-tor tevik k'grazhayek stonn hish-tor shi'vukhut il eglus.” He explained to both of them.

Spock just seemed shocked to hear him talk again. It was difficult to tell.

Ghost was closer to throwing a tantrum. _You are up! You are moving, you are breathing, you are thinking, you are alive!_

_The body is alive._ He agreed. _The body was always alive. Kirk is dead._ This was a certainty.

_…Recalculating._ Ghost hissed with irritation, and retreated from their fight.

“…Guntarli?” Spock asked.

He nodded.

“Guntarli.”

“ Nash-veh i'hal-tor.” He informed Spock, and tried to lie down.

Spock’s hand dug into his shoulder. “ Du dungi-starpa'shau.”

He shifted the body about until the arm with the IV inserted was safe where it wouldn’t be knocked about, and sort of pushed himself sideways, out of one body and into the other, dropping back into shifting metal scales as the organic body lost its tension and fell, limply, to sprawl on the floor. _Fuck off._ He thought smugly.

Spock blinked, looked at where his hand had been supporting the body until it had stopped being occupied, and visibly pulled himself back together. “I am- I need to report to Captain Pike. Report this.” He looked between the body on the ground and the metal body curled around them both. “I-“

The thought was never finished. Spock backed away and out into the corridors. Back in their better body, he and Ghost could hear the swell of noise as at least a dozen people tried to talk to, or get past, the Vulcan. Spock stopped the latter and ignored the former, pacing off into the distance. Everyone’s routine was disrupted. There was no predicting when he’d be back.

_The USS Maui?_ He remembered.

_Gone. While you slept._ Ghost shifted in satisfaction. _They didn’t seem to want to hand around._

_I slept. Spock should have had time to update Pike._

_Maybe he’s doing it again?_

He grunted in acknowledgement, already strangely missing the ability to shrug in the organic form. _I wish we could keep an eye on them._

_Make sure they aren’t going to try anything with the organic form._ Ghost agreed. His mind partner thought about it for a moment. _Maybe ask D'rachanya?_

_Yay. More time in the body._ He groaned. _And for what? To ask D'rachanya so he’ll ask the ship’s mainframe?_

_We can’t do it._ Ghost reminded him irritably, though the itch of annoyance wasn’t directed at him. _I still think Spock deserved that fright we gave him._

He caught on to the edge of an idea. _Spock did it._

_…Yes?_ Ghost said. _This is not in question?_

_The body outranks Spock._

_Captain Kirk does._

_In the body I could stop the mainframe from requesting us._ _Then we can use the mainframe._

Ghost caught on. _Security cameras._ He hissed in approval, curling their tongue inside their mouth. _We could watch what he says to Pike._

_We could watch many things._ The possibilities were enticing. Maybe the organic body deserved some of the value Ghost placed in it. He slid intangibly sideways, and blinked open organic eyes. The IV insertion was a weird sensation. _Can you hold the bag?_

Ghost murmured silver assent, and wrapped their thin metal tail tip around it, holding it with slack in the tubing between bag and arm. His partner moved their metal body to accommodate the unsteady organic one, clearing a path. He stepped forward to just outside their cell, the minimum distance to encounter a computer terminal, and gestured for it to rise. Obediently, it rose from the floor. His head, enmeshed in organic frailty, felt fuzzy. A little slower, a little stupid. Blood sugar low enough for the brain to not be using as much of it as it would at full power. And everything was tired, the drop from the heights of adrenaline making his fingers shake slightly. _Ugh, organic. I can’t think. Where do I find Spock’s code?_

_Open his worklog._ Ghost suggested.

When his hands hesitated, the silver in his mind rose to support him. Ghost nudged his hands in the direction they were needed with a quiet suggestion of a potential method, both of them closer to filling the organic body together than filling the metal one, sitting silent and frozen supporting the IV bag. Together, Ghost controlling the reflexes in the muscles of the iris so it didn’t dilate too far, they looked. Everyone’s records of the work they did on shift were public within the Enterprise’s intranet of internal systems. All they needed to do was search Spock’s identification code, which Ghost could remember easier than he could, and there they were. Precise, mechanical data gathered by the computers themselves on what the Vulcan had been doing on them, as well as all the files saved onto the mainframe by Spock himself. The latter was what they were looking for.

_Spock must have written code to repeatedly request access._ Ghost reasoned. _The requests came too fast to be physically sent by the end of it._

It would be early, back when Spock had still been new to them. Trying to lever open their head and spill their brains all over the floor for close examination had been Spock’s first methodology, an invasion that still rung wrong for both of them, although Ghost seemed to take issue with it for different reasons. For Ghost it had been the interference that was potentially catastrophic, not the complete lack of privacy and care. Spock had definitely earned the fright they’d given him. He flicked to the top of saved files and began scanning their titles from there. After over twenty ‘new person on ship’ types of files, most of which he was pretty sure Kirk hadn’t ever filled out; there was the first document that could have been executable code.

He opened it up. _This?_ He asked, trusting metal eyes to read faster than organic ones.

_This._ Ghost agreed.

It was a pretty simple instruction to the mainframe – to continually request access to the ARU’s code until the request was successful. But when he tried to shut the little program down, Spock’s authorisation code flashed up on screen. _We have the solution to that._ Ghost shivered between them in agreement, the anticipation of having a thorn pulled out, of getting a cast off a broken arm. _Kirk authorisation Delta-4561-K9-42._

_You need to say it out loud._

He tried. He couldn’t. He choked on the words somewhere between the thought and the action, spitting out a garbled splutter.

_…Hold on._ Ghost murmured.

_I can’t say it-_

_Broca’s area compromised. Wernicke’s area compromised. Speech production compromised._

_Yes somehow I think we’ve already discovered that, because I can’t fucking talk!_ He hissed, edging closer to panic and a void in himself, in the organic mind, things ripped out and damaged and _missing_ , connections that faltered and tripped and stuttered-

Ghost washed over in him silver, clear calm. _Refocus. The code._

He wrenched himself away from the void. _Biometrics?_

_Workable._ Ghost agreed.

It wasn’t very often that a computer terminal deep under the skin and away from the bridge in a ship was asked to confirm orders through biometrics, rather than the faster authorisation codes. God bless Starfleet’s love of standardised equipment, not just for making maintaining a ship a thousand times easier (unless there was a Scotty on board who couldn’t help customising everything), but also for the inclusion of a genomic-tester on every terminal. Just in-fucking-case. He jabbed the organic thumb onto the sharp spike when it popped out of its compartment. The terminal whistled in acknowledgement, and tucked the prick-tester away for sterilisation. It took a couple seconds for extracted DNA from the blood to be read, confirmed as both fresh and of Captain Kirk. The important thing was that it gave him enough authorisation to shut off Spock’s program. They were lucky. If Spock’s coding had been flagged as more important, or had been bigger, they would have needed double or triple methods of authentication, but the program was short and simple. It clicked off, the file name changing slightly to reflect that the code within wasn’t being run by any system.

He sat the body down. _I want to see it with you._

Ghost obliged, ducking their metal head down to support the organic body with a head fin. _It will not be hurt. Delink?_

He flooded backed into the dragon, moving their tail to settle the IV bag down on the ground beside the organic body. _Alright. Time to check if we can get in._

And cautiously, reaching out expecting to get bitten, they reopened a door in their head they’d long slammed shut. Blankly, he and Ghost waited for the flood of information, of requests, but there was… nothing. The mainframe was calm. The ship’s internal systems laid themselves out in front of them, ready and waiting for orders. In their own head, privately, they sighed. He twined himself around Ghost, broadcasting relief that was received and echoed back to him with the feeling of a tension long held being relaxed, set free.

Then he actually looked at the connection. _Shit. We’re so far behind on updates its actually a problem._

_A problem for later._ Ghost murmured.

_Yes. No updating until we know what’s in them. But can we access the system?_

_Not all of it._ Through the doorway, down the connection, Ghost pulled him and his attention. _Weapons systems, communications, engineering firewalls. Too often updated, too much updated. Inaccessible._

_How fortunate we don’t actually want to cripple the Enterprise._ He huffed. _Security cameras?_

_Apparently not updated nearly as often._ Ghost hummed with humour.

The cameras on the Enterprise were as good as publicly available. They were made to be accessed by nearly anyone at nearly anytime anyway. It just needed the littlest _nudge_ , that slightest suggestion to the mainframe that all of them should be available all at the same time, and the ship’s systems, blind and unthinking, complied. Four thousand, two hundred and sixty four eyes opened for them. It took fractions of a second for them to skim through the vast majority, a quick question of if Spock was there, to which the answer was no, no, no, no three thousand and eight two times before the answer was suddenly _yes._

Spock stood in the Captain’s quarters, back ramrod straight, eyes gazing ahead without focus as Pike paced in front of him. “You- you,” Pike spluttered, “he’s _dead_?!”

“Captain Kirk said that Captain Kirk was dead.” Spock reported, and he and Ghost could almost see the repressed wince at the circular logic in that sentence. “He may have been confused, as he did not say so in Galactic Standard. Vulcan is considered a difficult language to learn; it may have induced errors into his speech.”

“What are you talking about – Kirk doesn’t know Vulcan!” Pike clutched at his hair, the wall, the edge of his desk.

“He spoke to me in Vulcan.” Spock responded tonelessly.

Pike collapsed into the chair behind his desk, exhausted and jittery. “Spock. Please. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I do not know the-“

“Your best guess then!” He snapped.

Spock considered the order, his feet regulation width apart, tightly controlled beyond just the calm clarity of Vulcan logic and into a sort of roboticness that looked a couple of stressors away from snapping entirely.

“Please. I know you must have some idea. I don’t care if it’s wrong,” Pike’s voice hitched, “I just need something to work from. Please, Spock.”

“I do not know if this is accurate.” Spock said slowly. “I am making presumptions. I may be biased.” He paused, giving Pike a way out. “What I am most confident of is that it was the imminent deadline of Kirk’s transfer to the USS Maui that caused… everything. Any hypothesises beyond that are difficult. I may be tainted.”

“What.” Pike grunted, resting his head on top of his hands.

Spock looked down at the floor. “I melded with Kirk.”

“Fantastic.”

“It gave me insight into the mind currently inhabiting Kirk’s body,” he continued quickly, spewing justification for something he was apparently not supposed to have done. “I can- it,”

“You couldn’t have said this- Spock. What did you learn?” Pike said, his voice slightly muffled by the table he was close to faceplanting into as one hand rubbed at his forehead.

“I attempted to meld with Kirk while he was unresponsive, after the incident with the USS Maui.” Spock recited. “It was similar to the descriptions left by previous telepaths. There was nothing there to reach out to. However, then there...“ he faltered, “then there was. One moment there was nothing, and then there was another mind, and it was sentient, intelligent. I called it Captain Kirk’s name, and he told me Kirk was dead in the meld, too, where lies cannot be unseen. So I thought it might have been possession, but when I accused the other mind it said the body was theirs.  A lie would have been obvious, within a meld. It was not a lie. And the mind- it is difficult to verbalise to a non-telepath, but it would be extremely challenging to integrate into a body so completely if it was no one’s own. Also, the mind I melded with was psi-null, weak to telepathic interference. A psi-null mind could not possess another’s body. The same tiredness and distress I had sensed from skin contact with Kirk while he was awake was present in this mind.”

“So it was Kirk?” Pike interrupted.

Spock took a deep breath. “The mind I melded with was the same as the mind which was in control when Kirk escaped from medical. It may be him. I think it is him.” Almost unwillingly, he stepped forward. “Captain… the mind I saw was confused, distraught. Angry, too. And there were pieces of it, portions that remained nothing when the consciousness connected to me, vast swathes of things that should have been there, but were not. If it is Kirk, he may truly think he is dead. I do not know how his mind is intact. It should not be functional.”

“Of course.” Pike groaned. “Of course.”

Spock eyed the prone human. “While in the meld Kirk communicated that I had said someone was going to separate what he referred to as ‘us’. He was consistently in a great deal of confusion around the pronouns he was referring to himself as, but very insistent that I had told him he was to be separated, and that could not be allowed to happen. He also referred to the manner in which I used to correctly call the Active Response Units ARUs, while I have now picked up on the slang term for them. Then he said he wasn’t ready, that something had been drowning him. He became agitated. Before I could end the meld safely, Kirk vanished. The connection was broken, because there was nothing more to connect _to_. His body was telepathically void and empty again.”

Pike breathed, deeply and forcefully into his hands. “So he was thinking in Vulcan? He thinks he’s dead?”

“No, the speaking in Vulcan occurred much more recently.” Spock moved, like a statue coming to life, bringing something up on his padd. “It is for this purpose that I have a requisition form 29A subcause B to-“

Pike groaned, long and overwrought, into the safety of his circled hands. “I don’t care about the fucking forms at the moment, Spock!”

“I had to commandeer supplies.” Spock put the padd down on the desk.

“Supplies.”

“Kirk woke up again one point three two hours-“

“And you didn’t tell me?!” Pike shot upright.

Spock narrowed his eyes slightly before Vulcan control kicked in and smoothed out his face. “I am telling you.” He pointed out testily.

“Tell me one hour ago! Was he okay? Did he say anything?!”

“He requested water and blood sugar medication, in Vulcan. When I addressed him by name, he told me Kirk was dead. Then he inserted an archaic method for treating low blood sugar into a vein in his arm, said something about Guntarli death rituals, and collapsed again.” Spock shifted his weight. “I have no further information to report.”

“He speaks Vulcan.” Pike moaned. “He says Jim’s dead. He’s waking up and randomly collapsing.”

“Affirmative.”

“…You really think it’s him?”

Even through the flawed eyes of the limited camera, they could see gears turning in Spock’s head. Carefully, each microaction planned and cautious, he reached out and laid his hand on Pike’s sleeve. “I believe so. Chris. The dragon could flame. The mind did not want to be separated. He regarded me with familiarity. If you still want my ‘best guess’? Kirk’s mind remembered events only seen by the dragon. If it is truly Kirk’s mind, then I must conclude that it has been in the dragon. It should not be possible.”

“We delinked it.” Pike said to the table.

“The procedure was undertaken correctly. I thought it was impossible for Kirk to be in a sustained link. However, the data I have observed over the last twenty four hours contradicts my assumption.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Pike admitted, and they could see Spock almost flinch at the words. “What do I tell the Admiralty? That the hero of Starfleet attacked a medical ship?”

With the hand he had on Pike’s arm, Spock fidgeted, tapping the fingers rapidly. “You report that improbable progress has been made regarding Captain Kirk’s condition. You emphasise that he did not hurt anybody while piloting the dragon. You report the facts.”

It was almost a minute before Pike lifted his head. “Alright. Okay. Spock, you are going to draft a report with what we know so far.”

“Yes Captain.” Spock straightened, stepping backwards.

“You are going to do that right now, here, where I can see you.” Pike pointed to the spare chair in the corner. “We are going to at least make it sound like we have some semblance of control here.”

“Yes sir.” Spock took one of the spare padds out of its pile on Pike’s desk, sitting down and bringing up a document file.

He and Ghost watched Pike and Spock craft the report together. For all the ways that the regulations of Starfleet were constricting, and sometimes stupid, it had been Pike that taught him that he had to know the rules to break them. That way he knew where the line was, how far over it he could get before the risk outweighed the reward. Pike knew the way regulation was set out and the way it was actually enforced, two very different concepts. The way that the older Captain led Spock through the report writing was deliberate, and extremely careful. Not the most riveting entertaining, though. They watched the organics work until more than halfway through the next work shift, until their report was as polished and as carefully worded as it was going to get.

Pike went to sleep after that. They followed Spock out through the cameras, tracking his progress through the deck that housed the ship’s senior officers. The Vulcan, it turned out, was going to his own rooms. Spock’s quarters had their own camera, of course, but just like with Pike’s it only showed the sectioned off outer workspace area. Spock disappeared beyond its view, and that, apart from the rustle of clothing, was that. There were many more cameras on the Enterprise, showing many more things, but none of them absolutely needed to be seen. Ghost watched the people gathered outside the door to the dragon’s bay, as he shut himself down to rest.

It was Ghost that brought him back to full awareness, four point eight minutes into alpha shift when the far off noise of Spock’s heartbeat came into range, a beat distinctive to the Vulcan-human hybrid.

Spock strode through the doors. This time, someone was quick enough to follow him in. “Lieutenant Gaila-“

She burst away from Spock. People always forgot that Orion agility could be used for things other than lapdances. Ghost got them to their feet, because as fast as Orions could be, Gaila had nothing on them. She shrieked Kirk’s name as they darted down, bringing their toothless mouth around her waist and hauling up. Up in the air, Gaila screamed and began beating at their snout, while they wrinkled their lips in irritation and shook her slightly – they’d been very fucking clear. They didn’t want the aggressive, dangerous press of crew in the bay, close enough to try to steal the organic body, close enough to hurt it.

“Put her down.” Spock commanded.

They had a better idea. He fell into the organic body and pushed it up, opening its eyes, levering it to its feet with the IV bag held in one of its hands, unsteady and furious. “ Caibla TULN!” He snarled, loud enough to make the organic throat tear up with pain, and pointed. Ghost swung her, still screaming, through the air, carefully throwing her out the door with such tiny force that the people on the other side easily caught her, scrambling back to get away from the metal dragon.

_And stay away._ Ghost growled, raising their head fins. _Wait. Maybe we shouldn’t have done that._

_She came in here!_ He retorted.

_Agreed, but I think we should try to keep Spock calm. His heartbeat is elevated._

Ghost had a point. He turned the organic body towards Spock, holding out his hands to placate the Vulcan. “ θuoŋ fopla.”

_Wrong language._ Ghost muttered, and delved into the organic brain to try and help him out. _Try again._

“ Kroi nash-veh.” Ghost moved their metal body back into its cell, fitting it around the organic one snugly but without touching it. “ Ish-veh bolau shan.”

Spock stared at them.

“ Ni'droi'ik nar-tor.” He leant the body back against a part of the dragon. A metal tail tip snaked around his waist to hold on to the IV bag, like a prehensile seat belt from his father’s ancient car. “ Du kup puvutau khart-lan.”

_We are not supposed to know that!_ Ghost groaned. _Stop alarming Spock!_

_Oops._ “ Nash-veh dungi kroi i’variben.” He hid behind his hands.

“Pease do not do that.” Spock blurted, and snatched for his communicator. He shifted back towards the dragon body slightly, just enough to use the far better hearing in it as he and Ghost eavesdropped. “Commander Spock to Captain Pike. Captain Pike, please respond.”

It was several seconds before the communicator crackled. “Ugh. Spock. We’ve discussed this. Humans need sleep.”

“Captain, the Captain is awake.”

“I’m aware-“

“Kirk.” Spock interrupted Pike, correcting himself. “Kirk is awake. So I am… calling you.”

“Hold on, I’m coming.” A thump as Pike worked himself out of bed. “Spock you will let me in that door, you understand? This is an order.”

Spock eyed both of their bodies. They shrugged in them at the same time, two sets of shoulders rising and falling in union. They should have probably uncovered the organic body’s eyes before doing so. “…Bring a universal translator. Spock out.”

He uncovered the organic body’s face, despairing slightly at how bad the eyesight was, and watched Spock watch him until Pike arrived, thumping on the door. Spock pressed a button on his padd without looking, and the barrier opened with its normal quiet swish, letting Pike into the room. Fortunately, no one tried to sneak in behind him.

“Jim!” Pike rushed forward. He was holding a universal translator, so thankfully he was still apparently functional, if a little distressed. “Jim, are you alright?!”

“ Zan-tor nash-veh ken-tor du nah-tor nash-veh pakik hi nash-veh ac’ruth au tevik.” He tried.

The universal translator did its job. “What?!” Pike halted in front of him, like a magnet barred from sticking to its partner. “What- why do you think that? Why are you speaking Vulcan, when did you learn that?”

“ Etek ketilau Vuhlkansu lu pa-yut Nen-torv-aikum.” He started, backing up a little closer to his other body. “ Etek gen-lis fam-tor. Au tevik nash-veh d’thin nash-kla-min.”

“Please attempt to speak in Galactic Standard.” Spock approached. “Are you saying that you are not Kirk?”

_You are_. Ghost murmured, a tide of certainty and inexplicable confidence.

“ Au tevik.” He scrambled backwards, clawing blindly up a metallic ribcage as Spock and Pike surrounded him. “ Etek gen-lis fam-tor.”

Spock stopped. Took a step backward, made eye contact with Pike. “We will not touch you without your consent.”

“ Rim esta nash-veh.” He hissed, the soles of his feet slipping with the blood and grime on them. “ Rim bosh-esta nash-veh.” His breath hitched in his throat, choking him until Ghost eased it out again. “ Nash-veh gen-lis tadek-adir. Spock etek za-gad-tor vravshaueh nash-veh gen-lis tadek-adir. Etek fam-vesh'pok etek tra-vesh'pok etek paki-fun-tor fai'ei nash dungi-nem-tor nash dungi-tevik.” He finally pulled himself up onto Ghost’s back, hand clenched around a spine helpfully held upright.

Pike stared at the universal translator.

Spock looked up at him. “Kirk-“

“ AU TEVIK!” He screamed, still backing up, rising up off Ghost’s back to stand, Ghost raising their wing to steady him. “ Kuv au vesh'nem-telik nash vesht nem-tor.” He gestured to the dragon bay, stabbing his hand towards is sterile emptiness. “ Au la'tusa au, au fnu-ven nash-veh, au trasha nash-wilat.” Ghost curled around him, in their mind and in reality, the silver press of his attention and comfort as real and tangible as the silver press of their wings enfolding the organic body, shifting it, moving it down and around to cradle it under their metal collarbone, protected and safe. The IV bag had fallen out. A distant, irrelevant sting accompanied the fresh welling of red blood on his arm. He swiped at his face angrily. One of his eyes was leaking, tears washing off crusty scabbed blood and bile. The other was dry.

“The fuck?” Pike asked faintly.

“Give comfort to him.” Spock responded tersely, bringing up a file log on his padd.

“Uh.” Pike’s boots sounded on the floor, tread noticeably heavier than Spock’s. He came into view around the bulk of Ghost’s neck stretching above the organic body on the floor, his eyes darting warily to the massive dragon before looking down at the organic body. “You okay in there?”

“ Ri.”

“Aw, Jim.” Pike sighed, settling into a crouch on the balls of his feet, pulling the universal translator down on the ground. “What are we going to do with you, huh?”

_I cannot be him_ . He wanted to say. _I know that he is dead._ But when he tried to force the words out they scrambled, a disconnect somewhere, and came out as a garbled choke.

He let his mind click back into what was available to him. “ Tiil epeena’n haavaalte. Bishaarn has’uun opau. Tiil jaan’taail muurtin.”

Spock’s head appeared as he ducked around Ghost. “That was not Vulcan.”

“Andorian.” Pike tapped the read out on top of the universal translator. “That one I know Jim’s learnt. Should we be worried about the dragon dropping on him?”

They rolled before anyone could say anything more about it, sweeping the organic body up in the sail of one of his wings and their metal body twisted to avoid Pike and Spock. Ghost settled their metal skin on their back, neck tipped up to keep an eye on things, their wings cradling the organic body as it lay spread out over their chest. In the organic body, he raised the middle finger of his hand, waving it at Pike.

“…Alright. That’s Kirk.” Pike muttered.

“ Uum iil hiv’aal.” He called back down.

“Stop being so stubborn Jim.” Pike turned to Spock. “I’ll tell the Admiralty I’ve done a personal assessment. Might help.”

“I will investigate what Kirk did while awake and unsupervised last night.” Spock looked down at his padd.

“Wait-“

“ Tiil na’evoonlong niipung leem phuuzh.” He cut Pike off.

“You watched us?” Spock asked, as Pike looked mildly horrified behind him.

He rolled over onto the organic body’s side to talk to them. “ Bou. Tiil gec’taail. Iil giesh feem houtaan jaan taaeenichith’baan.”

“’This body’?”

“ Fith’betean araal epeena.” He pointed with the hand not pinned underneath his own weight. Ghost helpfully flared their head fins, to be obvious. “ Tiil a’vain’abeeu tout’caan speeteanee vaaril jaanilaapt. Mespiit haavean houtaan. Jajaen ae aoutean’naan.”

“You can connect yourself to the mainframe?” Pike said.

“What program?” Spock asked simultaneously.

“ Mesaan Spock dui itti ae aoutean’nann tutt janniluptil gaat euo. Hi gean the’viin tae.”

“When?” Pike demanded.

Spock sighed. “Three point zero eight five months ago.”

“ Firae hain fout’ai lit whouti. Kait sir have’anning yae.” He admitted.

“The what?” It seemed Pike was a man of limited vocabulary right then.

“ Have’anning yae D'rachanya. Ae gaet Spock. Hipti hae’whoutai tourau owae.” They’d been so furious. But they’d survived fine without the mainframe to guide them. Their anger had been an overreaction, one that could have seriously fucked with D'rachanya’s set up. “ Fouri naan dae tuturai taai whaunui aou setai. Maui touvou. Maui whantaui kamana awaka.” He sat up on Ghost’s chest, hanging his hands over his lap, looking down at them both squarely. “ Ae  taulouvai tanaaui feentai’aemana outo.”

“W- of course I’m confused!” Pike exploded.

“ Ae kana.” He glared, and tried to switch back to Vulcan, unsure if it would work. “ Etek vesh's'pon. Spock du zhu-tor nash-veh-tor fal'i'kal. Malatik nash-veh fam-ek'ka'I ul-tabakau. Wi etek ashivau nash-veh dash tam'a dungi-etek ashivau abi'navuneh du vesh'tra, du eit'jae etek-tor.” He looked at his fingernails, the blood and gunk caked under them, comparing them to the shining metal of their dragon body, so much weaker, so easier to hurt. “ Etek kup-fam-tor k'tve'hi wi etek ashivau. Etek fam-dva-tor etek kup-fam-tor il, wi etek ashivau.” He breathed, the need to do so still so strong and new. “ Nash Spock dash. Nash-veh dash kitork-nash-veh. Nash-veh aitlu fun-tor kesaing d'rachanya.” He realised that could be taken the wrong way. “ Nash-d'rachanya fam- D'rachanya.”

“Not yet,” Spock asked him. Pleaded with him, in a very Vulcan, neutrally expressed way. “Please stay conscious a little longer. Have you been linked with the dragon all this time?”

“ Sos’eh? Nash-veh fam ac’ruth. Nash-veh fam ac’ruth ek la,” he motioned to his head, “ Tra vel tadek-adir, du nesh-zuneshek. Nash-veh tor ac’ruth fai-tor.”

_We could try to check_ , Ghost suggested. _Access the medical database, retrieve the files on Kirk, we may see what they do not._

_Might help._ He agreed. “ Etek dungi rihamau has-faiktra. Etek dungi ken-tor.”

“We’ll get you to medical.” Pike nodded, and flung himself backwards when Ghost began to growl with their metal throat.

“That is a sign that the dragon is upset.” Spock informed him, seemingly pleased to have some knowledge to contribute.

“ Ri has.” He growled, the organic throat incapable of the same sound Ghost was making. But he’d give it his best attempt. “ Fer’at ti, fer’at ip-sut. Au dungi fam satau nash-veh yuk-tor. ”

“Jim, come on!” Pike backed away. “Leonard will-“

“ Ri khim’ip!” And he threw himself from the vulnerable body into the protected one, twisting upright, Ghost coiling their tail around the organic body. He threw themselves up, extending their wings out, snapping them down to batter Spock and Pike with the air they displaced as Ghost bared their teeth and they continued their growled, metallic shrieking in their throat.

Pike stumbled backwards. Spock brought up his padd, further confirming the lack of a self-preservation instinct. Behind both of the organics, D'rachanya slowed slipped out of his cell, padded forward on folded up bat-like forelimbs, holoscreen rolling with concern. The other dragon stepped over Pike, who yelped and sidestepped to hide behind Spock. “Spock?!”

“Fascinating.”

“Spock you aren’t piloting that thing, who’s piloting it?”

“He is moving independently. D'rachanya, attempt to calm Kirk.”

From the rebuttal that flashed across D'rachanya’s screen, that’s what he’d been planning on doing anyway. Slowly, ever so slowly for someone so massive, he swung his tail around. The tip, curled securely around the root-woven encasement of the kan-sailau, bumped softly against their nose.

They retracted their teeth. Too close to the plant, not willing to take the chance of hurting it.

“Why is it ghosting like that?”

“Cease aggravating them.” Spock snapped, grabbing out to D'rachanya’s shoulder and hauling himself up it. “Kirk, we will not let them hurt you, but you cannot continue to respond like this. I do not know what you want.”

D'rachanya swayed his tail, the kan-sailau waving in the air. Their nose followed it, though they kept their hearing tuned to Pike’s movements. Hesitantly, Ghost folded their wings up. D'rachanya flashed gratitude on his screen. They stretched out their tail, passing the organic burden it carried onto D'rachanya’s back. Spock caught on to the organic body, though D'rachanya shifted so there was no danger of it falling off.

He plunged into its fragile chaos again, blinking open human eyes. “ Ri has.”

“No medical.” Spock agreed quietly.

“ Rom.” He let his head thunk down on Spock’s shoulder. “ Nash-veh nah-tor nash-ak’shem sahran s’hal-tukhau va’ashiv.”

“Do you want to eat?” Spock readjusted his grip on him.

“ Kup’fam. Skaun-pi’nafek lafot-maylik.”

“I will find some other way of getting you nutrition.” Spock said quietly, and stood up, taking the organic body with him in a bridal carry. He squeaked inelegantly, but before he had the opportunity to squirm Spock jumped off D'rachanya, landing with a thud but very little jostling from the perspective of the person he was carrying.

Ghost looked on, not alarmed, exactly, but surprised.

_I know._ He thought to his partner. _Spock normally seems so fragile._

_Most things would, compared to dragons._ Ghost sighed, something wistful. Trailing thoughts about safety, about preventing harm.  Ghost was weird.

“Okay, fine.” Pike recovered, heartrate still alarmingly high. “No medical. But Jim, you can’t stay in the dragon bay, there’s nothing-“ He cut himself off and Ghost swung their metal head around to glare at him. “I’m sorry. Please don’t destroy anything.”

When Spock breathed, his expanding chest shifted the organic body around in his arms. It was soothing. With his advanced-calculus-aka-human-interaction face firmly on, Spock looked down at him. “You would be more comfortable in your quarters. They are familiar. They have a replicator, your clothes, your bed, a bathroom-“ Ghost narrowed in on that last bit, “all of which you will need. No one will confine you there, but you will be more comfortable.”

_What’s wrong with a bathroom?_ He asked Ghost, slightly confused.

_A bathroom. Your quarters shared a bathroom with the one next door._

_The quarters next to Kirk weren’t occupied._ He remembered, which was a relief. Maybe that was what Ghost was excited about, the safety of not having a neighbour, the potential escape route if he needed it.

_It wasn’t._ Ghost murmured. _Is now, though._ And before he could ask when Ghost had found that out, _Spock is there. The security camera in his room is next in line to the room that was yours. He is second in the chain of command for the dragon flight, technically, although I still don’t know what Pike pulled to get him here. It makes sense._

_It’s logical._ He agreed with wry humour.

“If you consent to moving to your room, once you are there you can return to link with the ARU.” Spock continued persuading them, and that, that was more than enough to convince him.

“] Ha.”

“You could-“ Spock stopped. “Yes?”

“ Ha.” He started to try to clamber out of Spock’s arms. Spock let him.

Pike gasped, staggering with the amount of air that came out of his lungs. “Jesus christ. Thank you, Spock.”

“It is Captain Kirk’s decision.” Spock replied placidly, though his eyes said that something was working in the brain of his.

“ Nash-veh tor ac’ruth aitlu sular estuhl nash-veh. Il glazhau na’nash-veh.” He crossed his arms, a little more aware that he was mostly naked. He pointed at the door. “ Aitlu au sa-nash-veh.”

“We can do that.” Pike assured him, coming closer, but not making contact. “I’ll get the crew to clear the corridors.”

“ Lesek.” He said, and watched Pike light up, not happy but acknowledged. He knew what that felt like, to be ignored. He hadn’t known he was doing that to Pike. _He cares about Kirk a lot,_ he muttered to Ghost, and felt uncomfortably guilty about it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to tell them.

Ghost replied to his other thought instead, the one about ignoring. _We should interact with him?_ It was an unsure question. _Pike does not understand, but he wants to help._

_Helping will make him happier._ Not happy, exactly, but happier, and improvement was good. He took a few steps closer to Pike and stood outside of touching range, uncertain. Pike didn’t touch him, which was something of a mixed bag of relief and regret, but it prompted an actual smile from the Captain. The other Captain, technically. He heard Pike’s orders over the intercom, booming through the ship, but it still didn’t quite click, wasn’t quite real, until Spock overrode his locking program, or whatever it was that was keeping the rest of the ship at bay, and the doors opened to no one.

Ghost pulsed with relief in him, and he echoed it, twining with his partner’s emotion until it was more _both_ of theirs than _either_. Having the organic body further away from them was a risk. But the flat reality was that the body was unsuited to live in the dragon bay, without nutrients or sleeping places or a source of water. Keeping it there with their metal form just wasn’t going to work, though a wide and deep streak of stubbornness in him railed against the idea. But he had his own logic, and Ghost’s unhappy reasoning, and Spock’s gentle, awkward persuasion. It made more sense for them to move. He just didn’t have to like it very much.

Breaking out of the circular thinking of have-to-don’t-want-to-have-to, he turned inward for reassurance. _Ghost?_

_We can rest soon_. It wasn’t in answer to anything he’d thought.

_Soon._ He agreed, and stepped over to Spock.

Spock led the way out, and, cautiously, he followed. Pike trailed behind them; far enough behind that Spock had to hold the button to keep the turbolift doors open to let Pike follow them in. Being in a confined space meant Pike was close to him again. Ghost helpfully ran through the various exits routes available to them, chiefly the hatch at the top of the turbo lift, and how easy it would be to climb out and disappear, if they needed to. Soon wasn’t quite soon enough. The turbolift doors opened onto the correct deck of the saucer. Spock stepped out, and he followed his Vulcan, out and away from such a close space with Pike, who had pressed himself against the opposite wall but was still far too near, breathing the same air, staring at him.

The corridor was empty. His skin crawled, skittering with feeling like the legs of a thousand small insects, warning and discomfort. He scattered to Spock’s side, tapping his fingers against the spotless wall, smearing it with the vile concoction of bodily fluids on him. Captain Kirk’s quarters were several doors down the first passage on the left, close to the turbolift, not far, but this was not his world. It was not his place to walk ahead, not within his power to go by himself, to think for himself when any action could be the one that was a step too far. So he would not step too far, sticking close to Spock, right on his heels. Spock led him to Kirk’s room. The door opened – whether in recognition of Spock or Kirk’s body, he didn’t know – and the Vulcan gestured for him to move inside.

Pike cleared his throat. “Should I leave you two here?”

Spock glanced at him, an obvious gesture of deferring to his judgement, which was a novel feeling.

He thought about it. “ Nash-veh dungi-fun-tor nash-veh vath ak'shem lu nash-veh svi’tra. If dungi-ri dau nash-veh kuv du hafau.”

“Shit, I didn’t bring the universal translator-“

“Captain Kirk says that he intends to return to his other body once he arrives in his quarters, so it will not affect him if you remain.” Spock interjected quietly.

“Oh.” Pike blinked. “You don’t mind me, uh, watching that?”

He shrugged.

It was someone else’s turn to have translation issues. “Captain Pike, what does that gesture mean?”

“I’ll explain later.” Pike dismissed Spock’s question, which was fairly rude of him after all the translation Spock had been doing. The other Captain moved closer, treading lightly, hands up and displayed non-threateningly in a gesture Ghost wasn’t sure was conscious.

They were over it all. He turned into Captain Kirk’s room, stepped in, and barely gave his organic eyes enough time to take in more than a flash of the room around him before he leapt headlong out of it. The rush of expansion into clearly defined systems and steady invulnerable skin felt like freedom, a distant world away from the swoop of his organic stomach as the muscles of that body went limp, abandoned for better places.

 

  
Footnote translations for everyone that would find them useful:

  
“[There is no logic to this!] Tra-se ozhikaing rai.”

“[Surak forgive me for I do not understand.] Surak ni'droi'ik nar-tor nash-veh din-tor.”

“[This needs water. This needs medication for blood sugar.] Nash-masu bolau. Nash-haseret khaf-slor-tukh.”

“[You speak Vulcan?] Du Vuhlkansu stariben?”

“[This needs water.] Nash-masu bolau.” He repeated patiently. “[This needs-] Nash-”

“ [I will get them.] Nash-veh i’prah.” Spock jerked, the tricorder falling to the ground. “[Do not-] Fam-tor-” His eyes flickered, looking at the organic body, studying different piece of it. “[You must stay awake.] Du bol-hafau- kum'i.”

“[This needs water.] Nash-masu bolau.”

“[Is dead.] Tevik.” “[This needs blood sugar medication.] Nash-haseret khaf-slor-tukh.”

“[Guntarli acknowledge death by sharpening antlers against a grave marker or object of religious significance.] Guntarli nafai-tor tevik k'grazhayek stonn hish-tor shi'vukhut il eglus.”

“[I am going now.] Nash-veh i'hal-tor.”

“[You will explain yourself.] Du dungi-starpa'shau.”

“[Go away!] Caibla TULN!”

“[I am stopping.] θuoŋ fopla.”

“[I am stopping.] Kroi nash-veh.” “[That one needed removal.] Ish-veh bolau shan.”

“[Sorry.] Ni'droi'ik nar-tor.” “[You can call the Captain.] Du kup puvutau khart-lan.”

“[I will stop talking now.] Nash-veh dungi kroi i’variben.”

“[Look, I know you think I’m confused, but I’m pretty sure he is dead.] Zan-tor nash-veh ken-tor du nah-tor nash-veh pakik hi nash-veh ac’ruth au tevik.”

“[We integrated Vulcan while orbiting Main Artificial Satellite.] Etek ketilau Vuhlkansu lu pa-yut Nen-torv-aikum.” “[Our language is missing. He is dead, I know this fact.] Etek gen-lis fam-tor. Au tevik nash-veh d’thin nash-kla-min.”

“[He is dead.] Au tevik.” “[Our language is missing.] Etek gen-lis fam-tor.”

“[No one touches me.] Rim esta nash-veh.” He hissed, the soles of his feet slipping with the blood and grime on them. “[No one ever touches me.] Rim bosh-esta nash-veh.” His breath hitched in his throat, choking him until Ghost eased it out again. “[Our language is missing. Spock, we tried last night and it failed, our language is missing. We were not ready, we are not ready, but we cannot go back because this will be taken and this will be killed.] Nash-veh gen-lis tadek-adir. Spock etek za-gad-tor vravshaueh nash-veh gen-lis tadek-adir. Etek fam-vesh'pok etek tra-vesh'pok etek paki-fun-tor fai'ei nash dungi-nem-tor nash dungi-tevik.”

“[HE IS DEAD!] AU TEVIK!” He screamed, still backing up, rising up off Ghost’s back to stand, Ghost raising their wing to stead him. “[If he was not dead, this would not be!] Kuv au vesh'nem-telik nash vesht nem-tor.” He gestured to the dragon bay, stabbing his hand towards is sterile emptiness. “[They mourn him, they hate me, they leave this place! His grave here, forgotten and abandoned and lost!] Au la'tusa au, au fnu-ven nash-veh, au trasha nash-wilat.”

“[No.] Ri.”

“[We cannot be separated. The body will die. We were not ready.] Tiil epeena’n haavaalte. Bishaarn has’uun opau. Tiil jaan’taail muurtin.”

“[No I’m not.] Uum iil hiv’aal.”

“[We watched you through the security cameras.] Tiil na’evoonlong niipung leem phuuzh.”

“[Yes. We were interested. I used this body to get rid of your stupid program.] Bou. Tiil gec’taail. Iil giesh feem houtaan jaan taaeenichith’baan.”

“[As opposed to that body.] Fith’betean araal epeena.” “[We are back to being able to connect to the mainframe. Also fuck you. Don’t do that again.] Tiil a’vain’abeeu tout’caan speeteanee vaaril jaanilaapt. Mespiit haavean houtaan. Jajaen ae aoutean’naan.”

“[Spock made a program that made the mainframe send requests to access us constantly. We cut off our access to the mainframe then.] Mesaan Spock dui itti ae aoutean’nann tutt janniluptil gaat euo. Hi gean the’viin tae.”

“[You were being a dick. But I shouldn’t have disturbed the birthing swarm.] Firae hain fout’ai lit whouti. Kait sir have’anning yae.”

“[The swarm that made D'rachanya. We were angry at Spock. We tossed a computer terminal in there.] Have’anning yae D'rachanya. Ae gaet Spock. Hipti hae’whoutai tourau owae.” “[The projector in his nose is my fault. You know this. You came down to the dragon bay.] Fouri naan dae tuturai taai whaunui aou setai. Maui touvou. Maui whantaui kamana awaka.” “[I do not understand why you are confused.] Ae taulouvai tanaaui feentai’aemana outo.”

“[Not you.] Ae kana.” He glared, and tried to switch back to Vulcan, unsure if it would work. “[We were out of time. Spock, you told me to initiate. Of course I’m not all here, recovery is partial. But we retried, I hurt, Ghost forced us, retried until it worked, and you were there, you asked us to.] Etek vesh's'pon. Spock du zhu-tor nash-veh-tor fal'i'kal. Malatik nash-veh fam-ek'ka'I ul-tabakau. Wi etek ashivau nash-veh dash tam'a dungi-etek ashivau abi'navuneh du vesh'tra, du eit'jae etek-tor.” He looked at his fingernails, the blood and gunk caked under them, comparing them to the shining metal of their dragon body, so much weaker, so easier to hurt. “[We could not write for you, but we tried. We did not think we could do this either, but we tried.] Etek kup-fam-tor k'tve'hi wi etek ashivau. Etek fam-dva-tor etek kup-fam-tor il, wi etek ashivau.” He breathed, the need to do so still so strong and new. “[This hurts, Spock. I hurt, and I’m filthy. I want to go back into the dragon.] Nash Spock dash. Nash-veh dash kitork-nash-veh. Nash-veh aitlu fun-tor kesaing d'rachanya.” he realised that could be taken the wrong way. “[This dragon, not D'rachanya.] Nash-d'rachanya fam- D'rachanya.”

“[Maybe? I’m not sure. I’m not all here,] Sos’eh? Nash-veh fam ac’ruth. Nash-veh fam ac’ruth ek la, ” he motioned to his head, “[there are things missing, you saw it. I don’t know.] Tra vel tadek-adir, du nesh-zuneshek. Nash-veh tor ac’ruth fai-tor.”

_Might help._ He agreed. “[We will check the medical database. We will try to understand.] Etek dungi rihamau has-faiktra. Etek dungi ken-tor.”

“[No medical.] Ri has.” He growled, the organic throat incapable of the same sound Ghost was making. But he’d give it his best attempt. “[Doctors lie, doctors hide. They will not send me to sleep.] Fer’at ti, fer’at ip-sut. Au dungi fam satau nash-veh yuk-tor. ”

“[No bones!] Ri khim’ip!”

“[No medical.] Ri has.”

“[Good.] Rom.” He let his head thunk down on Spock’s shoulder. “[I think this body is running out of fuel again.] Nash-veh nah-tor nash-ak’shem sahran s’hal-tukhau va’ashiv.”

“[Cannot. Digestive system inoperable.] Kup’fam. Skaun-pi’nafek lafot-maylik.”

“[Yes.] Ha.”

“[I do not want people touching me. Or looking at me.] Nash-veh tor ac’ruth aitlu sular estuhl nash-veh. Il glazhau na’nash-veh.” He crossed his arms, a little more aware that he was mostly naked. He pointed at the door. “[I want them gone.] Aitlu au sa-nash-veh.”

“[Thank you.] Lesek.”

“[I will return to my other body when I’m in there. It won’t affect me if you remain.] Nash-veh dungi-fun-tor nash-veh vath ak'shem lu nash-veh svi’tra. If dungi-ri dau nash-veh kuv du hafau.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so first of all I am SO grateful to the people who have been commenting! Not only does it stop making it fell quite so much like I'm just tossing this out into the void, but you really do inspire me to write more. So this is apparently the secret of this author. Put comments in and writing falls out. 
> 
> Secondly, yes, weird as shit formatting. Yay, she says, having had to write the html for all of this. Yay. This is why having fluffislife translate all the vulcan has been a lifesaver, seriously. 
> 
> So I'm pretty tired and I really just want to post this already, but please tell me if there are typos.


End file.
